Howard Hawks once said that a good movie has "three good scenes and no bad scenes." H. Bruce Humberstone's Ten Wanted Men, a Western about a corrupt rancher who hires a group of villainous gunfighters to harass and exterminate the rival Stewart family, may be a minor film, but it fits Mr. Hawks' criteria. In this case, there is one good sequence, one good idea, and one good scene that makes Ten Wanted Men pass the bar. The sequence is a fantastic gun battle where the remnants of the Stewart family hole up in a house and the gunfighters lay siege upon them. The idea is that after killing the corrupt rancher the heroes have to mop up the rest of the gunfighters who are laying waste to a nearby town. After all, the gunfighters have no loyalty to the dead rancher. Why would they suddenly leave when he dies once they have been paid? Wouldn't they stay in town where they could spend their ill-gotten gains? Who's going to stop them? After all, they're still armed and dangerous. The good scene takes place during the aforementioned siege. The evil rancher reveals that he has the sheriff's wife hostage and makes her beg them to surrender. The men almost do...right until one of the women they're fighting with marches out into the No Man's Land, confronts the wife, and knocks some sense into her. She doesn't even care that she will be taken prisoner as a result. She just does it. Bad. Ass.
7/10
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