Linbeymusol Wonderful character development!

Nonureva Really Surprised!

Breakinger A Brilliant Conflict

Neive Bellamy Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

bombersflyup I don't know what The Far Country is meant to be. It feels like I joined in the middle of a television series and I'm constantly reciting Chance the Rapper's verse from that DJ Khalid song I'm the One, okay though, okay though. It's suppose to be a romance/western but it certainly isn't that.Jeff's cattle run through town, the town boss Gannon is in the middle of some speech and finds Jeff guilty of something and is jailed, he did nothing, okay though. Gannon then sets Jeff free for no reason, okay though. Ronda and Renee are infatuated with Jeff for no reason, okay though. Jeff is not interested in Renee even though she is nice and attractive, yet is interested enough in Ronda, okay though. Ronda gets Jeff to do a job for her, when he isn't needed as the guys doing the job obey her instructions anyway, okay though. Jeff goes back to take the cattle and Gannon and some men come after him, they have a shootout, Gannon sneaks behind him and decides to shoot from a distance and miss instead of going right up behind him, okay though. Then Gannon decides for he and his men to just leave not attempting to kill the man they went after even though it was like six to one, okay though. Jeff and his partner Ben get shot, Jeff survives and makes it back to town, Gannon's man is about to finish him and Gannon says no, okay though. Then at the end Jeff and Gannon have a shootout and cannot hit each other five metres away crawling, okay though. It was watchable, but pretty lackluster and uneventful and it didn't make a whole lot of sense.

Robert J. Maxwell This Anthony-Mann directed adventure yarn gets an extra point for its location shooting. It's not Skagway, Alaska, or Dawson, in the Yukon. It's in the Canadian Rockies and the landscape is majestic.Stewart and Brennan are two saddle buddies who have brought a herd of cattle to Skagway, where they are confiscated by the roguish villain and only law officer, McIntire. The local saloon mistress, Roman, takes a shine to Stewart and bails him out of jail. The shine on Stewart is buffed by an innocent, passionate, kind French girl, Calvet.All of them, Stewart's cattle included, wind up in the muddy camp of Dawson. They're followed by McIntire and his henchmen, who set about doing evil, robbing hard working miners of their claims, sneering, shooting innocent civilians and engaging in other such mishigas.Stewart doesn't care for anyone but himself and perhaps for his old buddy Brennan. But McIntire and his goons offend him once too often. Gunplay ensues. And, as is usual in an Anthony Mann movie of the period, the violence is pretty brutal.If you stripped the film of its lush budget and carefully drawn supporting characters, you'd have a John Wayne B movie from 1935 -- "The Man From Skagway." Maybe "Guns of the Yukon," or something of that ilk.But money and talent make a difference, and while is far from a challenging movie -- nobody's character evolves except Stewart's -- it's as entertaining as all get out, by gum.Stewart does a fine job, and Brennan is Stumpy in excelsis. Ruth Roman is stiff and Corinne Calvet is a little cloying, but so what? We have McIntire as a kind of Judge Roy Bean of the Far North. We also have Ruth Roman's men being buried beneath fifty feet of snow on "the ice trail." The ice trail is actually the Columbia Ice Fields. I watched them shooting these scenes as a child. When I visited the Columbia Ice Field some thirty years later, the location was barely recognizable because the glacier had melted so much that its edge had retreated more than a hundred yards.

Tweekums When this film starts Jeff Webster has already driven his heard of cattle from Wyoming to Seattle and has clearly had some trouble on the way as he is accused of murder just as the steamer is leaving for Skagway, Alaska. Luckily for him the ship has cast off and he manages to hide away till they reach their destination. Things go wrong here though as he has a run in with the corrupt self-appointed Judge Gannon. The judge confiscates his cattle on a trumped up charge forcing Webster to find work helping local business woman Ronda Castle move her supplies to Dawson in Canada's Yukon Territory. He doesn't go far before turning back and liberating his cattle and taking them over the border and out of Gannon's jurisdiction. Once they complete the difficult journey to Dawson he sells his cattle and buys a stake in the Klondike valley to try his hand at gold panning. After a number of prospectors have been murdered and robbed on the trail back to Skagway he decides to take an alternate route to Juneau; unfortunately his partner was less than discrete and the get bushwhacked by men working for Gannon, who has now moved to Dawson with the intention of stealing the prospectors' claims. As Webster recovers he has to make a decision; does he leave town or does he help the people stand up to Gannon and his hired guns? This was a fine western that quickly caught my interest as the hero wasn't the typical selfless character I had expected; indeed he frequently said he didn't see much point in helping others, more than once avoided a gunfight and at one point it looked as though he'd been killed. Inevitably by the end that changed after all you can only push a man so far! James Stewart put in a fine performance as Webster and was ably supported by Ruth Roman who played Ronda Castle and John McIntire who played Gannon. Fan's of the TV series M*A*S*H will no doubt be pleased to spot Harry 'Col Potter' Morgan who has a small role as one of Gannon's henchmen. A good western needs a good villain and this one is no exception; Gannon is both crooked and so bad he'd shoot a woman in the back! As well as a good story there are some good action scenes, including an avalanche and a thrilling final showdown. If you are a fan of Westerns or of James Stewart this film is definitely worth seeing and even if you aren't it passes the time well enough in some beautiful scenery.

jzappa Jimmy Stewart, soft-spoken, classically well-mannered and mild, with that inimitable drawl, was an unexpected choice to play a frontier anti-hero, and that's precisely why, unlike more conventional cowboy stars, his lanky figure and detached behavior gives Jeff Webster a vulnerability rarely seen in western protagonists, particularly his power to intermingle a sinister, fuming state with America's Everyman. Webster intractably insists he can survive best depending on and relating to no one but himself. He declines help to others in mortal danger, but doesn't expect it from them either. The story then becomes a contest between us and Mann over how long he can keep the theoretical hero from ultimately being heroic? The script hangs around holding its fire with perverse delight.Webster and his subordinate Walter Brennan constantly rub the law the wrong way while running cattle to Canada. Their key obstruction is Sheriff Gannon, the shameless boss of the corrupt border town of Skagway. Gannon administrates spontaneously without looking away from his poker hand, hanging men for inconsequential offenses. He impounds Webster's herd as "payment to the government." Gannon is a cheat who's not so much interested in confiscating Webster's cattle as he is his spirit.When Webster is enlisted to escort a cavalcade to a gold mining settlement in the Yukon by Ruth Roman's gorgeous but hardhearted saloon owner Ronda, he finds his opportunity to reclaim his livestock and flee Gannon's influence. The resulting ploy, which brings about an intrepid chase, has Webster smirking to himself, one rogue outwitting another, both taking pleasure in the game. The next scenes reveal Webster to be startlingly more callous than previously thought. And that's before his arrival in Dawson, where he lets tightfistedness prevail over propriety, selling his herd to Ronda rather than the deprived locals. She's the superstore running the small proprietorships out of business, reducing the town's livelihood to rubble. And they're defenseless to retaliate. Regardless, she's later usurped by Gannon.The plot is constantly priming Webster for redemption just for him to backpedal again. It concludes with a smidgen of doubt about the characters. Webster thinks the locals should deal with it or move camp if they don't want mortal consequences from Gannon's henchmen. Likewise, he's getting rich in the gold rush. The sooner he can turn his back, the better, and no reproach from trusty old Brennan, or the Dawson marshal, or the sweet, unselfish Renee can persuade him otherwise. Renee is the most level head in the movie, repeatedly urging Webster to take a stand while Ronda urges him to take advantage. The movie stages the tiresome love triangle device in a much more interesting way than usual, with both women smitten by our severe cowboy, but again Mann plays with us. Each time we applaud Renee, the script flings Ronda into Webster's gaze instead.It's a conundrum of the movie star figure. Because Stewart was long-established as a guileless average middle-class fellows innocently draw into conflict, it's a test of our trust in the studio-era tradition of typecasting. And if Mann understands that his audience feels that it's certain that he gets wise to heroism, he can imbue his movie with a concentrated emotional look at hostility.