A Tough and Tender Story. A Genre Classic, and That's a Fact!

Conagher_1880

One of the best westerns I've seen in YEARS! Thomas Haden Church FINALLY loses his goofy comedy persona and shows that he can be tough, and if necessary brutal, in how he deals with villains. (Hint, he is good both with a gun and a rope). I will state right here that Church is the FIRST actor in ANY western that I have seen (and I've seen a LOT, ranging from William S. Hart's silents, through "Tombstone," "Open Range" and other modern westerns) to actually "throw down" when he uses his pistol in Part 2's climactic gunfight. Watch how he holds his Peacemaker, and steadies it for aim....SOMEONE did some research, and it paid off!

Robert Duvall's character of Print Ritter ranks up there with Gus MacCrae and "Boss" Spearman. It's a pity he hasn't been in more westerns, because the role of frontier authority figure suits him to a "T". The kindness, as well as hardness, he displays (watch how he deals with a trader who sells smallpox infected blankets to Indians....excellently done!) is classic Duvall. His character is tough, but human and you can see the fatherly love he has for all those girls. The attraction Print has for Nola is also well played. Duvall is absolutely perfect at playing the hero who is human.

The story is a mix of truth and fiction, (based loosely on a horse drive to Nebraska's Haythorn Ranch) and is expertly directed by Walter Hill. The Canadian scenery is beautiful, but is a minor distraction from the overall excellence of this movie.

I've been to eastern Oregon, and much of it is high desert, as is southern Idaho and the other locales of this movie. It's country as beautiful as any, but it's a harsh....stark kind of a beauty, and would fit the tone of this story much better. However, the setting works, and the set representing Caribou, ID has a seedy, sleazy boomtown look to it that captures the look and feel of late 19th Century mining camps just right. Strangely enough, some of the towns in modern day northern Nevada have that same rough feel....but without the sleaze. The feeling of the frontier is alive in those towns, and the feel is captured quite well by the set designer for "Broken Trail."

One complaint I do have is why can't SOMEONE NOT have actors ride modern saddles in westerns?????? As much as I like Church's wood-post horned Wade saddle, and Duvall's swell forked rig, those are very obviously modern buckaroo saddles, not the Taylor and Homestead trees that would have been common in the 1890s.

Other than that point, I have no problems at all with "Broken Trail".

The actresses playing the Chinese girls are all appropriately pretty.....Greta Scaachi is attractive, even as disheveled as she looks in this movie. In short, this is a western that works!

Now if only Hollywood would grasp the fact that LOTS of us love westerns and want more of them.....

score 10/10

Conagher_1880 26 June 2006

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw1402909/