“’Have gun, will travel’ reads the card of a man. A knight without armor in a savage land…”

Those words ended every episode of Have Gun Will Travel, sung by Johnny Western in a time that such words could be sung without irony. Outside of Richard Boone’s black-clad, craggy, Rhett-Butler-gone-to-seed gunfighter, that song was all I could really recall about this venerable Western from television’s golden age. Would it, like so many revisited shows from my youth, ultimately disappoint? Or would it hold up fifty years after it was originally broadcast, viewed as it would be by the far more jaded, cynical man I’ve grown into?

What are you willing to do to save the life of someone you love? Would you sail across an ocean? Battle a cyclops or fire-breathing dragon? Or maybe smuggle a substantial amount of drugs across the United States-Mexican border. In Crossing Point, one man is pitted across immeasurable odds to accomplish such a task. Young lovers Michael and Olivia are enjoying a vacation in Baja with close friends. A clear romantic, Michael is ready to leave behind his club days and commit to the love of his life. Their happily ever after is derailed after Olivia is abducted by a drug cartel, and Michael is tasked with smuggling their product across the border into the United States in 12 hours.

I was entirely too young to remember even the syndicated run that my mother was watching in the late 1960’s. Under more normal circumstances that would not matter as I could introduce myself to this world with the DVD release. That was before 1987 and the release of Brian De Palma’s classic film. Honestly, I simply can’t watch these episodes without thinking of that movie. For an entire generation that film has defined these characters and that time. It’s unfortunate, really, because this 1960 series had a lot going for it, particularly when you look at what else was on television at that time. Never before had such brutal violence in such a starkly real world graced the black and white sets of America.