Montana (1950)

One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

Blistering performances.

Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

An El Cheapo western if ever there was one, with a climax made up entirely of stock footage - and not particularly exciting stock footage at that - either used as is or very obviously projected on a back screen. Still it's hard to put a good cast down - Flynn even gets the opportunity to sing a song. He's as charming as ever and Alexis Smith makes a colorful foil for his attentions. S.Z. Sakall dominates the first quarter-hour or so, and then unaccountably disappears, while Douglas Kennedy makes an indifferent villain. Fortunately, Ian MacDonald makes an ugly enough henchman and Paul Burns is more than okay as Flynn's Walter Brennan type sidekick. Enright's direction is competent if undistinguished, - at least he keeps the film moving. Karl Freund's photography (provided it isn't being used as a foreground to back projection) is as colorful as a postcard. But it lacks style. But then so does the rest of the film. The players give it a bit of class, but otherwise it's on its own. The script is no more than adequate. Maybe the plot and the characters were less familiar back in 1950 but I don't think so. Still at 76 minutes and by "B"-feature standards, it's a presentable enough offering.

" . . . by the Great Land Barons," Warner Bros.' trailer for MONTANA states. The "them" in this sentence refers to the Patriotic Loyal True Blue Average Union Label Normal Folks (like us) comprising the majority of our USA Citizenry in 1879 (the year of this story), of 1950 (the year of this movie), and Today (the year of 2017). "The Great Land Barons," of course, are the forerunners to Today's Job-Killing Corrupt Capitalist Trumpster Rats. Speaking of rats, now that Putin's Puppet has succeeded in destroying 300 years of American Civilization by eliminating ALL of President Obama's Consumer Safeguards, I was NOT surprised to view AN ACTUAL, REAL LIFE RAT OF THE RODENT FAMILY scuttle across Aisle 12 of the Kroger Store two miles from my home TWICE as I stopped for milk an hour before watching MONTANA, an errand that took double the usual time in fighting through the masses of other terrorized customers milling about. I NEVER saw so much as one single rat inside my local Kroger (or anyplace else I frequent, for that matter) during the ENTIRE EIGHT YEARS that President Obama was America's Leader. However, MONTANA teaches us that when those of the ilk of Billionaire Oligarchs are allowed to run roughshod over "We Little People" and "drown the government in the bathtub" (to use the catch-phrase of Trump's Chief Henchman, Steve Bannon) we can expect authentic rodent rats to be given the run of our Kroger Stores on Day #82 of Putin\Trump's Reign of Terror. Though I tried MONTANA's featured mutton dish once and didn't care for it when Obama was Commander-in-Chief, I'm thankful for Warner's timely warning to beware that Rump of Rat might become Kroger's newest deli meat as soon as a Monkey Business Bozo such as Trump bans all of America's regulations, protections, and safeguards on behalf of Vicious Vacuous Venal Village-Idiot Villains such as himself.

This is not one of Errol Flynn's great westerns -- such as "Dodge City" or "Santa Fe Trail". Nor is it a bad movie, as Westerns go. It pleasantly ambles along, and is as good or slightly better than the average Western. Certainly, Flynn's rough and tumble life was catching up with him here; although only about 40 at the time of filming, he was certainly looking middle-aged here, with a much fuller face than we saw just a very few years earlier. Nevertheless, he was still a handsome leading man.I think there are two strikes against this film. One is its short running time -- only 77 minutes. Second, although done well, it's the old cattlemen versus sheep-men all over again. So there's nothing really very unique about this film, but as those sheep-vs-cattle movies go...this may be the best of the lot.The screen romance between Flynn (the unknown sheep-man) and Alexis Smith (the cattle rancher) is really the heart of the picture, particularly since she is already loved by her cattle rancher partner.You might enjoy, or be taken aback, by the duet sung by Flynn and Alexis Smith -- "Reckon I'm In Love". Personally, though perhaps a tad out of place, it was kinda cute.This is one of those films where I liked the good guys because I liked there screen personas --Errol Flynn, Alexis Smith, S.Z. Sakall (for the humor), and Paul Burns (as a sort of Gabby Hayes-like character). On the other hand, I really didn't care for the actors who were the bad guys -- Douglas Kennedy and Slim Reeves; their personas were simply too clichéd.Nevertheless, this film is worth watching, but probably won't end up on your DVD shelf.

There was a line by old Tecumseh Burke (Paul E. Burns) that blew by a little too quickly for me to properly digest, but it had something to do with Morgan Lane and a reference to the Little Big Horn. It had me immediately recalling Erroll Flynn's role as General George Armstrong Custer in the 1941 film "They Died With Their Boots On". Truthfully, that might have been the highlight of the flick for me, right ahead of the brief divergence concerning Poppa Schultz's supply of antimacassars. I heard that term once in my youth long ago, and today I know what it means. But you'll have to catch the film to find out.For all the dozens of Westerns that ever came out with cattlemen versus sheep ranchers as a plot element, you can probably count on one hand the number in which someone thought it might be a good idea for both animals to try to get along. This was one of them. Not that Morgan Lane (Flynn) ever got to prove his point, when push came to shove, the sheep-men who made a stand simply turned away a cattle stampede and declared victory. I thought it was just too pat an ending for all that went before, with Miss Singleton (Alexis Smith) ever so willingly giving up her grudge against Lane. Not buying it.What's probably more interesting than the story is seeing Errol Flynn team up with Alexis Smith in a duet around the campfire singing 'Reckon I'm In Love', before they actually came to terms with that diagnosis. In the ensuing decade since Flynn's portrayal of Custer he looks like he might have aged twice as much. There seemed to be a few times when Flynn and his co-star might have had some good chemistry going, but that didn't seem enough to compensate for the kind of rivalry that went with the territory. Had I found myself in Flynn's shoes, I probably would have rounded up my men and got the flock out of there.