No film version of Montana Rides Again has been made, but the Montana Kid trilogy inspired a 1951 Paramount film, Branded, with Alan Ladd and Mona Freeman. This motion picture draws most of its plot from Montana Rides, and it suffers from an inhibited treatment of the material, as well as from obvious miscasting.

The stoical Ladd (a perfect Shane in George Stevens' 1953 film) is wholly inappropriate for the Montana Kid role, which demands a performance like that of the youthful Burt Lancaster in The Crimson Pirate (1952) or perhaps a Harrison Ford in his Indiana Jones persona. Mona Freeman makes a weak and tepid heroine, and the entire plot is overly complicated and much too sparing of the physical action. The film is also uneasy in its handling of the Mexican material. The picture is, in fact, the victim of a tame conception, which attempts to make the material...