Peereddi I was totally surprised at how great this film.You could feel your paranoia rise as the film went on and as you gradually learned the details of the real situation.

Leoni Haney Yes, absolutely, there is fun to be had, as well as many, many things to go boom, all amid an atmospheric urban jungle.

Freeman This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

Jerrie It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

JohnHowardReid NOTES: Nominated for an Academy Award for Special Effects, but lost to the only other nominee, Green Dolphin Street. Negative cost: around $5 million. Location exteriors filmed near Pittsburgh (the forest scenes) and by Arthur Rosson's unit on the Snake River, Idaho (the canoe sequence).COMMENT: No survey of Hollywood's treatment of big-budget westerns would be complete without a Cecil B. De Mille epic. What is curious about this one though is that it wasn't particularly popular at the boxoffice and actually lost money. This seems strange as most of the ingredients for popular success are here. True, the movie is overlong, but most cash-paying patrons will hardly object to this extra value for their money. (I thought the film would be improved if three or four of the long and rather pointless dialogue scenes between Cooper and Goddard were cut. My impression is that these scenes merely pad out the film as a sop to the two principals). True, the script is somewhat naive and juvenile. It reduces historical figures to pasteboard cut-outs and then hands them verbose dialogue of appropriate banality. (It says much for the players that most are able to rise above their material). But the plot does allow for plenty of incident and spectacle, including shooting the rapids on the Snake which anticipates The River Wild. It's a pity that the "peg" on which all this drama is hung, namely the conflict between hero Cooper and heavy Da Silva, is so disappointingly resolved with the villain receiving very cursory if just desserts from Cooper's faster pistol. It's true too that neither Cooper nor Miss Goddard seem entirely comfortable in their roles. The script forces Coop to do some remarkably stupid things, so it's probably no cause for wonder that he often appears to be acting half-heartedly at half-steam. Miss Goddard seems far too elegant for a maid-of-all-work. Her make-up is too heavy. Her performance on the other hand seems too lightweight. Many of the support players also seem somewhat ill-at-ease. Fortunately, Da Silva makes his villain really mean and nasty.Technically, the film's tension is a bit undermined by some obvious process screen effects. Director De Mille's hand is most in evidence in the crowd and action scenes. Rennahan's fine Technicolor photography is also a major asset.P.S. When asked about Fredric (or is it Frederic?) M. Frank, his co-screenwriter Charles Bennett said in an interview with Pat McGilligan, "A lovely guy, but he couldn't write his own name." Well, that last comment was literally true anyway.

Mickey-2 "Unconquered" was one of those Cecil B. DeMille productions that did not quite make it as a true epic, but it did qualify as good film entertainment. Set in the American colonies of the 1760's, the film brings into conflict a love triangle, Indian uprisings, dastardly dealings by greedy whites in selling arms to tribes for furs, and the rights of indentured servants in the colonies. Featuring Gary Cooper and Paulette Goddard in the lead male and female roles, plus Howard Da Silva in the role of the sneeringly evil fur trader, this film moves at a decent clip, even if some history is ignored for the sake of the story in the film.Ah, the story. Paulette Goddard has run afoul of the British judicial system and is given the choice of execution in England or slavery in the colonies for a period of 14 years. She chooses the route of an indentured servant, and is placed aboard a British frigate heading for the colonies. While on board ship, she catches the eye of both Cooper and Da Silva, and in a shipboard auction, is purchased by Cooper, much to the chagrin of Da Silva. Cooper intends to free her when the ship arrived in the colonies, but Da Silva forces the auctioneer to resell Goddard, unbeknownst to Cooper.In later scenes, the three engage in one conflict after another, which brings in to the arena, the Indian tribes led by Boris Karloff, playing a Seneca chief named Guyasuta. Da Silva's role, Martin Garth, had earlier married the chief's daughter, and that gives him an inroad with the Indian tribes. Cooper, as Captain Chris Holden, is able to rescue Abby Hale, Goddard's role, from the Indians, and they make their escape down river, which leads to a trip through the rapids and over a waterfall. Finally comes the showdown in which the Indians attack the nearby Fort Pitt, garrisoned by British regulars and frontiersmen and their families. While the battle rages outside the fort, Holden and Garth have to settle their disagreements in the fort's stable.Besides the trio of leading performers, the cast has several Hollywood regulars. Cecil Kellaway, Ward Bond, and a very youthful Lloyd Bridges add to the protagonists in the film, and Mike Mazurski gives a great performance as Garth's henchman in the attempt to control the Indian fur trading practice."Unconquered" gives Cecil B. DeMille a chance to embellish another period of history, and while the production is worth watching, a viewer needs to take the overall work as entertainment, and not completely true to the times of 1763 Colonial America. 8 out of 10.

helpless_dancer I enjoyed this film, but the acting was so overblown, especially by Paulette Goddard, that I had to laugh during many of the more tense situations. Hollywood really did a number on pre-revolutionary America when they cast Karloff as the Chief of the cutthroat redskins out to relieve Coop and crew of their freshly styled coiffures. However, I did like De Silva's hammy portrayal of the villainous gunrunner intent on getting the girl and a large portion of land. Entertaining show, but very little history or realism, but then, that is not what I was after or expecting.

BrianG Cecil B. DeMille was one of the pioneers of the American film industry, and you have to give him credit for that. He was also one of the first to pack his films with gratuitous sex and violence, and you have to give him credit for that. He got away with it by inserting preachy moral "messages" that proved the "evil" of everything he had just shoved in your face, and you have to give him credit for that. His films were enjoyable in a goofy sort of way, but that doesn't apply to this one.There's one thing that DeMille could never be accused of, and that's cutting corners. His movies were expensive, and they looked it. They were usually also packed with well-known stars such as Gary Cooper and Charlton Heston. The one thing that few of his movies had, though, was a coherent script, and this movie is a prime example. Stars, production values, spectacle...whatever advantages this film has are sunk by the absolutely idiotic dialogue the actors are forced to spew out. You have to wonder what the actors were thinking as they were reciting this drivel. You also have to wonder what the writers were thinking as they were whipping this junk up; didn't they realize that people don't even _remotely_ talk or act like they do in this movie? Everything in this film is overblown, overheated and overdone. The only other one of DeMille's films I can think of offhand that goes even further over the edge is "Northwest Mounted Police," which is so jaw-droppingly awful it should be classified as a comedy.As long as you realize what you're getting into, the movie is fun in a goofball, campy sort of way. If you're looking for anything else, forget it.