Flyerplesys Perfectly adorable

Stoutor It's not great by any means, but it's a pretty good movie that didn't leave me filled with regret for investing time in it.

Humbersi The first must-see film of the year.

Fleur Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

edwagreen Overly long and deeply troubled film. One problem is that Kirk Douglas, the star, doesn't dominate here. In fact, he is over-shadowed by Dewey Martin and Arthur Hunnicutt, the latter winning a best supporting actor nomination for his part as the heavy-talking fur-trader in the film. One can only guess why Hunnicutt was nominated.The film recounts the meeting of the two men and their journey along with Hunnicutt up the Missouri River to trade with Indians for furs. If the Indians were so friendly as others have mentioned, why at first, did they feel that the young Indian girl that they had could serve as a hostage?There is bickering, there is Douglas and Martin both taking turns in either getting shot or stabbed. There are devious Americans to deal with, and the two guys of course falling for the Indian woman.The film becomes monotonous due to its length.

Boba_Fett1138 Yes, I know this is a frontier western but it yet is one that manages to feel more like an adventurous pirate movie at times. The characters travel by water and also their looks and behavior seem more suited for a pirates movie. I'm not saying all this as a complaint though, on the contrary really. I like the movie for having such an adventurous feeling and atmosphere to it. It makes this an unique sort of western, by Howard Hawks.In its setup and with its story, this foremost remains a quite simplistic movie. Basically it's a movie in which the main characters are traveling from point A to B and come across all sorts of dangers and meet new people on their way. This is an approach that often gets picked for a movie of this sort, made around the same time period but most of those movies don't really work for me, since they are often just not that interesting to follow and also way too slow in certain parts. This is even a problem I have with lots of other Howard Hawks movies but I can honestly say that this movie did actually work for me. Even though the movie definitely had plenty of slow moments in it, it never bored me because it was a very engaging one to watch.Like most of these movies do, it also builds- and relies heavily on the comradely amongst its main characters. This is a theme that quite often appeals to men, so you can also really truly call this a men movie, despite the fact that it also throws in a obligatory love-story.It's not like Kirk Douglas his performance makes this movie but his presence is still of course a welcome one. It's a movie from the very early days of his career, before he really was an household name, even though he had already earned himself an Oscar nominated and earned another one in the same year as this movie got done, for his role in "The Bad and the Beautiful", which is also a movie that I absolutely loved watching!It's not the type of western that's set in only the desert. Like I said before, for most part its set on a river and in the northern countryside, in which the Indians still ruled. It provides the movie with some beautiful scenery, that perhaps is not really done enough justice by the movie its black & white camera-work. But who knows, maybe the overall movie would had not worked out as well if it indeed got shot in full, bright color. So we just have to take this movie for what is and be glad for the way that it turned out to be.An adventurously entertaining-, as well as intriguing movie to watch.8/10 http://bobafett1138.blogspot.com/

derekcreedon Like RED RIVER it's in black-and-white, which some find disappointing. For me it's always given the material an agreeably unglamourised flavour like its predecessor but then I was raised in the age when b/w was still the norm. A lot of it takes place at night, in any case, in the arc-lit woodlands of RKO, which does develop a certain claustrophobia. It's quite a dark film in many ways with much emphasis on physical pain, injury and impairment. People are whipped, hobbled, stabbed, shot, one guy gets an arrow in the neck, another a burning brand in the face - and the mighty Kirk has a dislocated finger amputated with the help of whisky in a scene angled for comedy but which isn't very funny. Even the head-baddie's a cripple.As a happy-go-lucky mountain-man who joins a French fur-trading expedition up the Missouri River Kirk starts out amusingly in Ned Land chucklehead mode with even a song thrown in but becomes increasingly brusque and modernistic perhaps to compensate for the fact that he's not the driving force here. At the same time I like the way Hawks makes him a team player, sitting back to listen to other actors doing their thing and not even getting the girl in the end. That prize is won by his buddy, played by the slick shifty-looking Dewey Martin with his Tony Curtis quiff but none of the Curtis charm, unfortunately. Inter-racial love stories in Westerns were all the rage at the time but the Indian bride usually got killed - an idyll denied an ongoing reality. Not here, though. As the Blackfoot princess Elizabeth Threatt is sensational. A tall mysterious lady with a cat-like grace and a haughty mien but with sudden flashes of great good humour she's very much a Hawks Woman - practical, resourceful and able to call her own shots when the time comes - and all without a single word of English dialogue. There are a couple of sly filches from THE OUTLAW (which Hawks was directing before Howard Hughes fired him) including the famous "I'll keep him warm" scene. Rumour has it that Kirk demanded 15 takes just to get it right - no I'm joking but it's a cute thought.Out on the river in daylight Hawks and Russell Harlan conjure up some marvellously fluid imagery for which Harlan was Oscar-nominated but didn't win. Ditto Arthur Hunnicutt who oozes authenticity as the guide/interpreter with his tall tales and seasoned wisdom. He's also Martin's uncle and there's some deft undercutting of myth when it's revealed that Martin's sledgehammer punches are the result of a bullet-pouch clenched in his fist and that his former prejudice against Indians is based on one of Uncle's stories ("I talk too much."). But he finally renounces prejudice off his own bat without knowing the story to be a lie. Tiomkin's exquisite score is sprung on three main themes - the epic journey, the Indian presence and a beautiful love-song sung by the Frenchmen as a remembrance of home. At the close Martin elects to remain with his bride and her people while his companions prepare to return downriver - for them a thousand-mile journey, for him "just a step and a holler" home to bed. For the audience a classic juxtaposition of movie-dreaming and our own reality. The 'Mandan' and its crew recede into infinity in our minds like a 'trip round the universe', such a long long way. But like Martin we can simply go home now, the show's over. We put on our coats and file out of the old fleapit (I'm talking 1952 here) just a step and a holler from our own private teepees.To correct a previous poster the guy who got it in the neck was Pascal, played by Booth Colman.

aberlour36 This western features lovely scenery (alas, in black and white), a fairly good chase story, impressive music, and some excellent props and sets. On the other hand, some of the dialog is ludicrous, the ending is predictable, and at times the acting is ridiculously bad. Smirking Kirk Douglas and ever smooth-shaved Dewey Martin, with his impeccable conk and very tight leather pants, are not at all convincing as rough and tough frontiersmen. The female parts, like the Indian and black roles, are stereotypical and far from politically correct. The movie is very long (141 minutes), but the action and suspense generally hold one's interest.