ChicRawIdol A brilliant film that helped define a genre

Beystiman It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

Rio Hayward All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

Sameer Callahan It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

GManfred This is an excellent Golden Age picture which is heavy on action and light on historical accuracy. I wasn't around in 1940 and I don't know why, as several contributors have noted, studios routinely rearranged facts to such a degree as to make history unrecognizable, and I don't really care. I paid attention in school. What I want from an action picture is action, and "Santa Fe Trail" really comes through on that score.There are several sweeping fight and battle scenes to satisfy any action fan, which makes this one of the more rousing westerns of the 40's, or any other decade. Just swallow hard as Errol Flynn (Jeb Stuart) and Ronald Reagan (George Custer) are depicted as West Point classmates and how Reagan, sporting a contemporary 40's haircut, looks nothing like depictions of Custer. You also have to take the abolitionist/slaver narrative with an enormous grain of salt. Raymond Massey plays John Brown as a wild-eyed fanatic in which must be one of his best movie roles in a long, distinguished career, and the rest of the cast is made up of many of Warner Bros. stable of supporting actors.As noted, this is one of Hollywood's best westerns but which gets a bum rap from the PC crowd, which piles on due to the lack of historical accuracy in the film. As a result, the website rating is a distortion which does not reflect true entertainment value.

zardoz-13 History collides with Hollywood in this Warner Brothers' entertaining, but distorted, pre-Civil War western about the bloodbath over slavery in the Kansas Territory during the traumatic 1850s. Actually, this Errol Flynn & Ronald Reagan epic directed by the legendary Michael Curtiz could serve a useful purpose in a history class because it contains just enough revisions to get it in hot water with historians but more than enough excitement and vivid characters to make it worth-watching several times. Curtiz knew no rival when it came to staging costume pictures or period pieces and his expertise with sprawling battle scenes is second to none. Raymond Massey's portrayal of abolitionist John Brown is incredibly gripping, especially when he solicits the Lord's forgiveness. Moreover, Massey played the infamous character again in another movie "Seven Angry Men." Yes, "Santa Fe Trail" was a propaganda piece, made during in the crucible of World War II before America entered the war on the side of the allies. Yes, "Dodge City" scenarist Robert Buckner has a number of real-life personages tangle with fictional villains. Some of the history is so incredible that naive audiences may howl at Buckner's audacity. For example, West Point did not graduate George Custer in 1854, so the film is rife with historical inaccuracies. Nevertheless, "Santa Fe Trail" is a thoroughly rousing western with well-staged shoot-outs, confrontations, and one of the nine outings where between Flynn and leading lady Olivia de Havilland were lovers. Guinn 'Big Boy' Williams and Alan Hale provide terrific comic relief, and Van Heflin plays an appropriately slimy villain.

thinker1691 Robert Buckner wrote the screenplay for this movie called " Sante Fe Trail " and was directed by Michael Curtiz. Whatever both men thought of the finish movie who can say, one thing is for sure, neither man ever made another such mess. Historically, the story is very one sided and presented John Brown (Raymond Massey) as nothing more than a raving lunatic. In addition, the title of the film is supposed to be about the Trail through the state of New Mexico. Within the scope of the story, audiences are offered a new crop of West Point cadets all of which are friends shortly before the Civil War. Errol Flynn plays Jeb Stuart. while Ronald Reagan plays George Custer and Olivia de Havilland, trying to select from the two. Far fetched as that is, the audience spends more time watching John Brown fight with the U.S. army, instead of the scenery along the trail. Were it not for the comic relief of Alan Hale or the serious addition of Van Heflin, the movie would have have garnered little more than a ho-hum. With the sounds of conflict rising and falling due to the emerging sound systems, the movie rates low as an exciting adventure story. ***

lmbelt A classic Flynn-DeHaviland film no doubt. But as an adequate depiction, or attempt at, historical fiction... well, not hardly. If you love a good western, love triangle, or Errol Flynn action epic, this is definitely the one to catch. As for the facts, well why bother. Being a Civil War buff, the extreme inaccuracies of the story line and fictionalized accounts of the principal characters was, for me, a major distraction. But as a film buff, hey what's not to like? Lots of action, great scenery, a handsome cast, and two zany, Shakespearean sidekicks.The biggest distraction for me was the grouping of West Point graduates. It is simply ludicrous beyond belief. For example, James Longstreet graduated from the Academy in 1842, John Hood and Phil Sheridan in 1853, J.E.B. Stuart in 1854, and George Armstrong Custer in 1861 (prematurely at that). Yet here they are all happy-go-lucky classmates sharing the same graduation class and thus assigned to Fort Leavenworth upon leaving West Point. In actuality, Custer was only 19 and still at West Point when John Brown was captured! This is not to say the depiction of commandant Colonel Robert E. Lee is not wonderful. It is. That of Secretray of War Jeff Davis is actually better! A blind hog finding an acorn, make that two acorns, maybe? In the film, the arsenal at Harpers Ferry is surrounded by mountains (a good thing), even if it is in no way surrounded by a town (not so good). And Brown's raid is staffed by about ten times the actual number that took the arsenal. Probably the saddest misrepresentation, however, is the lack of any black raiders, of which there were a few, including the first raider to have been killed.Yet this is still a very entertaining movie and one not to be missed by Flynn fans, Reagan worshipers, DeHavilland admirers (of which I am one), or John Brown worshipers (of which I am not). Where that train at the end is headed is anyone's guess since the track was probably not yet laid. But that's what Hollywood was about back then. Maybe the train was taking the crew back to L.A.