YMMV / The Fastest Gun Alive

• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: The scene where one of George's neighbors does an acrobatic show at a dance (with a highlight being when he treats a shovel like a pogo stick) is fun to watch but is rather abrupt and unrelated to the main plot.
• Cult Classic: The film has been obscure for decades, but severals fans and non-fiction authors who've seen it consider it to be an ignored masterpiece, with some Glenn Ford fans going as far to say that it's even better than High Noon.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Swope, the villain's menacing yet pragmatic sidekick, is a highlight of the film. The scene where he and his boss have a brief Mexican Standoff over a bag of money when Swope decides, Screw This, I'm Outta Here, is one of the film's most popular scenes.
• Magnificent Bastard: Taylor Swope is a dark-humored gunslinger and bank robber who works for Vinnie Harold, whom Swope considers himself second-best to. Swope lacks Harold's drive to prove his skill by killing anyone else who can claim the title as fastest gun alive, but he has no qualms with helping Harold do so. Harold believes that Swope is waiting for the day that someone else will beat him so that Swope can use this to his own advantage, something Swope neither confirms nor denies. When Swope's carefully planned escape route after a bank robbery leads to Harold encountering another quick draw artist, Swope helps him try to force the man into a duel by threatening to burn the whole town. Harold grows alarmed when Swope calmly counts and divides up their money and orders him to leave empty-handed. Swope faces off against Harold, weighing his chances of success, but ultimately chooses not to chance that for money and leaves with a bitter smile before being shot after putting up a prolonged chase and fight.
• One-Scene Wonder:
  • Fallon, the well-known gunman who reluctantly fights a duel against Harold in the first scene and loses, makes an impression in his minute of screen-time.
  • The blind bystander at the duel between Harold and Fallon who tells Harold there will always be someone faster than him casts quite a presence.
• Values Dissonance: One of George's nicer neighbors expresses the belief that women can't feel the same sense of dedication and pride about hard work as men.
• Values Resonance: The downplayed criticisms of toxic masculinity (in the form of George's neighbors subtly deriding his job as soft, which is portrayed as wrong and has a negative effect on his psyche that causes the film's conflict) have aged well.