Although "Dodge City" is loosely based on the early career of Wyatt Earp, the main character, here called Wade Hatton, is an Irishman who has served as an officer with the British Army in India, taken part in a revolution in Cuba and fought with the Confederates during the American Civil War. That (apart from the Civil War part) might not seem like the typical curriculum vitae of a Wild West sheriff, but Errol Flynn's inability to put on a convincing American accent was presumably the reason why this particular sheriff could not be portrayed as an American. In fact, Flynn's accent does not seem very Irish either- he sounds more like an upper-class English gentleman- but the producers evidently thought that linguistic accuracy was less important in the context of the British Isles.
The plot is one that later became something of a cliché in the Western, so much so that Mel Brooks chose to satirise it in "Blazing Saddles", the one about the stranger in town who leads the townsfolk in their fight against a gang of villains. At the time the film is set, Dodge City was the West's leading cattle town, the main rail depot for shipping cattle back to the East, and Hatton is the leader of a group of cowboys who brings a herd into town. When he gets there he finds that the town is under the heel of a ruthless cattle baron named Jeff Surrett, a man whose hired thugs will not hesitate to kill anyone who crosses him, or even anyone to whom he owes money that he does not want to pay. There is nobody with the guts to stand up to Surrett or, for that matter, with the legal authority to do so, the town's last Sheriff having been kidnapped and run out of town by Surrett's men. The people see Hatton as brave and honest, and want him to accept office as their new Sheriff; he is at first reluctant to do so, but eventually accepts the challenge after a young child is killed in a brawl. The rest of the film tells of his fight to bring law and order to the town.
Although the film deals with the serious themes of murder, violence and law enforcement, it is surprisingly light in tone. There is a good deal of comic relief, such as the sub-plot about Hatton's hard-drinking friend Rusty, who finds himself getting involved as the only male member of an otherwise all-female temperance movement, and the singing duel between Confederates and Unionists which leads into the famous bar-room brawl scene, a scene which has been imitated in numerous Westerns ever since, and even in non-Westerns such as "Brannigan", a film set in London. Michael Curtiz was to repeat the idea of a singing duel a few years later in "Casablanca". By today's standards it is rather surprising that the Southerners are seen as the heroes and the Union cause identified with Surrett and the villains, but this was the era of "Gone with the Wind" when Hollywood tended to treat the Confederates as romantic rebels, if only because a film which treated them in any other way would have done no business anywhere south of Baltimore.
The film relies heavily on its star, being a typical Errol Flynn vehicle. Hatton is similar to many characters Flynn played during this part of his career (his Robin Hood is another example)- a man of action, debonair, dashing, brave and charming , a man who seems carefree on the outside but who underneath that exterior cares deeply about right and justice. He is also a romantic, and in this film (as in a number of others) Flynn's love interest is played by Olivia de Havilland. Hatton's romance with the beautiful Abbie gets off to a difficult start when he is forced to shoot her quarrelsome, drunken brother in self defence, but the course of true love soon starts to run more smoothly.
"Dodge City" perhaps lacks the depth of some of the truly great Westerns such as "Stagecoach" (which came out in the following year) or "High Noon" (which deals in a more serious way with a similar theme- a lone lawman's fight against a gang of outlaws), but it is nevertheless one of the most entertaining of all Westerns, with an excellent performance from one of the most charismatic stars of the era. 8/10