Dodge City
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Movie Reviews of Dodge City
Movie Review: historic western
Summary: 5 Stars
movie quality good.color is fantastic and the action consistent.the matching of actors Flynn and Dehaviland always been perfect.there was always a chemistry between the two in previous films.this is the reason i will always be a collector of thier pictures.Movie Review: A Rootin', Tootin' Good Time!
Summary: 5 Stars
Good guys win, bad guys lose. Simple, basic great fun flick with plenty of shootin' to please the guys and romance to please the gals.
Highly recommended!
Movie Review: Dodge City
Summary: 5 Stars
This is A great Movie, and it got to my house in less than 5 days. the package was undamaged and the movie played great.Movie Review: A rare western gem
Summary: 4 Stars
After growing up in the 1950s, I think I became satiated with Westerns, and today it's a rare Western that can hold my attention. This is one that can. It is a true classic like only a few other Westerns. "Rio Bravo" and "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance" come to mind as comparable in quality. Errol Flynn is superb here, and in fact seeing this film on TCM was one of the reasons I began taking a more serious look at Flynn as a leading man...and he is usually quite wonderful. Olivia DeHavilland is at her loveliest here, and her role is not too sweet and has just a little grit. Ann Sheridan is rather wasted here, though she sure was "purdy". Bruce Cabot plays the primary bad guy with just the right balance, while his supporting crew of bad guys (including Victor Jory) are resident evil! Alan Hale is perfect as Flynn's sidekick...the best there can be (except of course for Gabby Hayes riding along side of Roy!). And, there are a host of other recognizable character actors here that have substantial roles you'll enjoy. Of course, I always tire of Bobs Watson (childhood actor) that seems to always spend most of his on-camera time blubbering...I didn't mind a bit that in this film he was dragged to death by a team of horses (oops...did I say that???).
In addition to the actors, there's some really memorable scenes here. Perhaps the best barroom brawl you'll ever see...the race between the train and the stage coach...and the climax of the film is the run-away train which also just happens to be on fire! Cliches? Surely. But as another reviewer pointed out, perhaps it was this film that made such scenes cliches in other Western films.
But there's also something negative to report here. This is, perhaps, the worst transfer to DVD I have ever seen by a major studio (Warner Brothers). The music by Max Steiner is wonderful (and by the way, done the same year as his score of "Gone With The Wind"), but during scene transitions it's so loud you'll be hunting for your remote to turn the volume down, only to need to turn it back up with the dialogue resumes. The Technicolor is wonderful, but quite a few scenes are horribly blurry and distorted, while most of the film is clean and crisp. In some places the alternating clarity or blurriness was so repetitive, it almost felt like I was watching a documentary about the restoration of a film and seeing before and after shots. Don't get me wrong, you'll still enjoy this film, but the usual Warner Brothers standard was not met here. Even the DVD case was about the cheapest plastic construction I've seen.
This film was the kind of movie that made Westerns the main-stay of movie-going for so many years, and I think it is all the better because the stars were not actors who were usually associated with the Western genre. Buy this film and luxuriate in the glory days of Western movies.
Movie Review: Deadwood It Ain't...
Summary: 4 Stars
"Dodge City" ranks high in the Flynn-Curtiz canon -- one of the blockbusters that Errol and Mike turned out between 1935 and 1941, when the Brothers Warner knew a big Flynn costume picture was a sure-fire way to open their own mint. "DC" is a film of stupendous action set-pieces. While the pieces don't add up to a completely harmonious whole, they DO set the bar for various western sub-genres to come. For instance:
The Cattle Drive epic ("Red River" or "The Cowboys")? You see it here with Flynn as hard-nosed trail boss Wade Hatton, mopping up the carnage after a cattle stampede, alienating Olivia De Havilland in the process (rent or buy the disk to find out why).
The Frontier Railroad picture (C.B. DeMille's "Union Pacific," John Ford's "Iron Horse")? Here is Our Man Flynn shooting food for the railroad crews as they lay down iron rails across the prairie, even suggesting the name of a budding metropolis ("Dodge City") to Colonel Dodge, railroad magnate supreme. (Errol is nothing if not a wily politician, knowing a good sycophantic move when he sees one).
Tough Sheriff Battling a Lawless Town. Is it the flinty-eyed marshall taming a corrupt Western burg ("My Darling Clementine," "High Noon," "Tombstone,") you hanker for? Well, pardner, you've got it in spades with "Dodge City," as Errol reluctantly pins on the tin badge and rams Law and Order down an uncooperative citizenry's throat, thereby cutting the cash flow and profit margins of the dastardly Bruce Cabot...and really ticking Bruce off. (where is Fay Wray and a giant ape when you need them?)
How does Warner Bros. weave all these disparate Western threads together into a seamless three-act structure, with satisfying character arcs? Well, as I've said, they don't. But the Technicolor is eye-popping, the saloon brawls and lynchings, the cow stampedes and shoot outs on a fiery train are as stupendous as anything most of us have seen this side of Computer Generated Natural Disasters, so we end up not caring. We are swept along by the images and swelling score by Max Steiner, and our only sorrow at the end is knowing that Errol is long dead and unavailable for the office of President. And just when we need him the most.