Afouotos Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

FirstWitch A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

Griff Lees Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

Rexanne It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny

fredcdobbs5 "Fighting Caravans", while an "A" picture in presentation, is a "B" picture in spirit. Even allowing for the fact that talkies had only been around for a few years when this film came out in 1931, it's still very much rooted in silent-era melodrama, even though some comedy scenes between veterans Ernest Torrance and Tully Marshall are injected in an attempt to lighten things up. Gary Cooper is effective, if still a bit hesitant in delivering his lines, and his love interest Lili Damita is pretty and sexy but wildly miscast and not up to the job. The film had two directors, and it's painfully obvious which one did what--David Burton, a Russian émigré brought out from the Broadway stage, directed the non-action scenes and his background shows in the unimaginative staging (this was only his third film as a director) and overexaggerated acting. Co-director Otto Brower was an action specialist and second-unit director, and while he did some excellent work later in his career (he worked on 1946's "Duel in the Sun", 1944's "Buffalo Bill" and 1939's "Jesse James", among dozens of others), the climactic Indian attack in this film is actually pretty ineptly staged; although there are a lot of Indians riding around, whooping and getting shot off their horses, it's not particularly exciting or even involving and, in addition, is very poorly edited.If Paramount meant this picture to be its answer to "The Big Trail", "The Iron Horse" or "The Covered Wagon", it fails badly. It has its moments (there's a good bar brawl about halfway through the picture) and Torrance and Marshall work well together, but all in all, it's just a "B" picture in everything but budget, and not as good as many others that cost far less. Worth a watch once, maybe, but not more than that.

Nicholas Mitchell Quick and amusing dialogue, fun characters, great location shooting, and high production values for the time, I was very happy to stumble upon this wonderful old film. I found it thoroughly entertaining.Seeing the charismatic glow of a skinny young Gary Cooper makes me regret that he adopted such a dull and wooden persona later in his career.A lot of the negative critiques of this film here seem to be based on superficial criticisms of the look and pacing of movies of this era, and not with the movie itself. If a movie is engaging, one soon gets used to the shortcomings of the time when early talkies were still finding their way with dialogue delivery and pacing. In fact, I thought they did a pretty good job here. While it is somewhat episodic, the performances are sensitive, and it does give us a rich and convincing glimpse of the wagon train era, even with the white man's simplistic perspective of Native American culture.

jeremy3 The main flaw to this movie is Gary Cooper. He was a great actor, but in this film appears to be in a not-yet-mature stage in his career. Cooper plays a lanky happy-go-lucky cowboy, who can turn the wrong direction or the right direction at this point in his young life. The heroine is a tough woman, but who still has a woman's heart. She can be very tough, but still expects to be treated right by a man. Instead of seeing what a great wife and partner for life she would be, Cooper's character struggles with many dilemmas before choosing this path. The best characters in the film are two older men, who are scouts. They are a dying breed and the coming of the railroad threatens to destroy their livelihoods. They are very selfish and want to keep their young apprentice (Cooper) under their wings. They try everything to destroy the budding romance between the hero and heroine. In the end, they realize that they have been fools, and decide that supporting the romance is after all the best solution. I liked the fact that the Native Americans were portrayed with some sensitivity. This was 1931. The main bad guy was white. While continuing some of the stereotypes about Native Americans - that they are brutal, the movie was at least light-hearted and comical, rather than pursuing an agenda of hatred towards the Native Americans. The ending was nice. Everybody finds love. Even an older man finds a Native American bride.

patrick.hunter To fully appreciate FIGHTING CARAVANS, one must know a little about THE COVERED WAGON, released in 1923 and the first Western epic. For decades this silent movie was hailed as the finest Western ever, and even in 1968, Bosley Crowther's popular book, THE GREAT FILMS, listed it as one of fifty greatest motion pictures. Few would claim that today, although it is still an entertaining silent. What remains undeniable is THE COVERED WAGON's influence. Other big-budget Westerns soon followed, and, by the talking era, Fox released THE BIG TRAIL (a virtual remake of THE COVERED WAGON) and Paramount released FIGHTING CARAVANS (a virtual sequel).Those of us who love THE COVERED WAGON adore the two lead supporting characters: trackers Bill Jackson and Jim Bridger, played by Ernest Torrence and Tully Marshall. They play them again in this film, only now they're older, because FIGHTING CARAVANS was filmed eight years after, and their increased age actually adds a curious poignancy. Slightly different from the plot conflicts in THE COVERED WAGON, this sequel hinges on whether Jackson and Bridger can both persuade their new, handsome protégé to continue tracking with them and not settle down to marry. However, just as the two have aged, so has the west. With the trains being connected, it is obvious that the trackers will no longer be needed. Not surprisingly for a Western with this sort of elegiaic theme, both Jackson and Bridger die in the film's climax, fighting renegades and Indians. (This, of course, was not how the actual Jim Bridger ended his days, and, yes, the film's portrayal of Native Americans is not accurate either.)Lili Damita, who would later become the first Mrs. Errol Flynn, had one of her best roles as the civilizing influence on the young handsome tracker, convincing him to veer away from a profession that would die with changing times. Gary Cooper plays the young tracker, and he wears buckskin far better than J. Warren Kerrigan did in THE COVERED WAGON. Cooper, in fact, plays another of his callow rakes he did so often in the early thirties, from THE VIRGINIAN to IF I HAD A MILLION to even A FAREWELL TO ARMS, and it's always odd to see him play such parts before Mr. Deeds would change his image afterward.Roughly the same year as this film, MGM released BILLY THE KID, Fox released THE BIG TRAIL, and R.K.O. released CIMMARON; all were very expensive, very spectacular Westerns. FIGHTING CARAVANS was Paramount's contender with these others, and it was a film so big, with so much location work, that two directors were ultimately required. Like the other big Westerns of its time, it contains crude, almost amateur-like, moments. One could even complain that the broad acting of the early talkies is totally at odds with a Western---a genre that traditionally relies on laconic, expressionless characters. However, for those who love curios, for those who love film history and Western history, and for those who love THE COVERED WAGON, this film is a charm.