Tom Burlinson, of "The Man from Snowy River" and not much else, plays Irishman Kootenai Brown who comes to the Northwest Territories to find gold. He befriends an American, and a fellow Irishman, and comes to the titled Williams Creek twice in the span of two years and loses all of his gold- once in an obviously fixed poker game and again when the gold mysteriously disappears off of his American friend after he is killed. By this point, Brown has met Scotsman McTooth (Donnelly Rhodes), who we find out at the beginning of the film was murdered by Brown. The entire film is a long flashback over Brown's life and his way-too-many run-ins with McTooth over many years as Brown is put on trial for McTooth's killing.
In a perfect world, this would have had a $100 million dollar budget and starred Mel Gibson and Sean Connery in the two lead roles. Burlinson is great in a very poor part, except for some sadly done hair extensions, and it is amazing he has not done much else since the "Snowy River" films. Rhodes' Scottish accent sounds like a poor Mike Myers impression, and every time he pops into Brown's life, he is missing a limb. The Canadian scenery is gorgeous, but the director thankfully does not linger over long shots of frosty lakes and evergreen forests. The settings are right, from a squatty little mining camp to large frontier towns. The rest of the supporting cast does their job admirably. Come on, though. I know this was based on true events, but how many times does Brown need to be screwed over by McTooth before he finally does something about it? And the video friendly title is also wrong, since the climactic murder occurs very far from the mentioned Williams Creek. The Williams Creek saloon shootout, while very well filmed, is not even a showdown, it is a group of men shooting at other men. "Showdown at Williams Creek" is not a bad film, but a flawed one.