This differs from other Andrew McLaglen-directed Westerns (The Way West, Bandolero, The Underfeated) in that it's set in 1935. Yet it still manages to retain more of the elements of a western than those of a thriller. Mattie Appleyard, the grizzled ex-convict determined to claim his 25,000 dollars prison savings against all the odds (the money is in the bank of the town that just outlawed him), is a part tailor-made for the sincerity and quiet heroism that James Stewart has projected so well throughout his career. In many ways, the character he created, with variations, in several Frank Capra films, comes to terms with Seventies cinema in Dynamite Man - bloody but unbowed.

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