Karry Best movie of this year hands down!

GetPapa Far from Perfect, Far from Terrible

Intcatinfo A Masterpiece!

Merolliv I really wanted to like this movie. I feel terribly cynical trashing it, and that's why I'm giving it a middling 5. Actually, I'm giving it a 5 because there were some superb performances.

Claudio Carvalho With the end of the North American Civil War, the manufacturers of repeating rifles find a profitable means of making money selling the weapons to the North American Indians, using the front man John Lattimer (Charles Bickford) to sell the rifles to the Cheyenne. While traveling in a stagecoach with Calamity Jane (Jean Arthur) and William "Buffalo Bill" Cody (James Ellison) and his young wife Louisa Cody (Helen Burgess) that want to settle down in Hays City managing a hotel, Wild Bill Hickok (Gary Cooper) finds the guide Breezy (George Hayes) wounded by arrows and telling that the Indians are attacking a fort using repeating rifles. Hickok meets Gen. George A. Custer (John Miljan) that assigns Buffalo Bill to guide a troop with ammunition to help the fort. Meanwhile the Cheyenne kidnap Calamity Jane, forcing Hickok to expose himself to rescue her.The dated "The Plainsman" is a great deception, with a pretentious and shallow story without historical accuracy, "politically incorrect" in the present days and a terrible screenplay that wastes Gary Cooper and Jean Arthur. Their performances are below average with awful characters. The best part is the beginning, with the inception of the lobby of the greedy manufacturers of weapons using the repeating rifles to provide Indian (and also "white man") annihilation in the name of the pockets full of money. My vote is five.Title (Brazil): "Jornadas Heróicas" ("Heroic Journeys")

ccthemovieman-1 I really wanted to like this western, being a fan of the genre and a fan of "Buffalo Bill," "Wild Bill Hickok," and "Calamity Jane," all of whom are in this story! Add to the mix Gary Cooper as the lead actor, and it sounded great. The trouble was.....it wasn't. I found myself looking at my watch just 40 minutes into this, being bored to death. Jean Arthur's character was somewhat annoying and James Ellison just did not look like nor act like "Buffalo Bill." Cooper wasn't at his best, either, sounding too wooden. This was several years before he hit his prime as an actor.In a nutshell, his western shot blanks. Head up the pass and watch another oater because most of 'em were far better than this one.

theowinthrop After the failure of "The Crusades" at the box office, Cecil B. DeMille stopped doing films about non-American history. His films for the next thirteen years were about our history from Jean Lafitte to World War II (Dr. Wassell). The first in order of production was this film, starring Gary Cooper as Wild Bill Hickok, with Jean Arthur as Calamity Jane. James Ellison was Buffalo Bill, John Miljan (not a villain as usual) was General George A. Custer, and Anthony Quinn was one of the Indians who fought at Little Big Horn. The villains were led by Charles Bickford (selling arms to the Indians) and Porter Hall as Jack McCall (who killed Wild Bill Hickok).Basically the film takes up the history of the U.S. after the Civil War. Lincoln is shown at the start talking about what is the next step now that Lee has surrendered. Lincoln talks about the need to secure the west (more about this point later). Then he announces he has to go to the theater. That April 14th must have been very busy for Abe - in "Virginia City" he grants a pardon to Errol Flynn at the request of Miriam Hopkins on the same date.Actually, while Lincoln was concerned about the West, his immediate thoughts on the last day of his Presidency were about reunifying the former Confederate states and it's citizens into the Union as soon as possible. It was Reconstruction that occupied his attention, not the west (except for the problems of Maximillian and his French controlled forces in Mexico against Juarez). But he had been involved in actual problems with the West. In 1862 he sent disgraced General John Pope, the loser at Second Manassas, to Minnesota to put down a serious Indian war by the Sioux (the subject of McKinley Kantor's novel, "Sprit Lake". Pope, incompetent against Lee and Jackson, turned out to be quite effective here, and the revolt was smashed.However, with all Lincoln's actual attention to western problems, it is doubtful that he says (as Cooper repeats at least once), "The frontier should be secure." There is nothing to say he could not have said it, but it is hardly a profound pronouncement by a leading statesman. Like saying, Teddy Roosevelt said, "Eat a good breakfast every morning for your health." It is not a profound statement of policy. It is, at best, a statement of recognizable fact. Cooper turning it into a minor mantra, like Lincoln's version of the Monroe Doctrine, is ridiculous...typical of the way DeMille's scripts have really bad errors of common sense in them.However, this is not a ruinous mistake. "The Plainsman" is an adventure film, and as such it has the full benefit of DeMille the film creator of spectacle. As such it is well worth watching. But not as a textbook on Lincoln's political ideas or his quotable legacy.

kyle_furr This movie has Wild Bill Hickok, Calamity Jane, Buffalo Bill and General Custer all together. Gary Cooper plays Wild Bill and Jean Arthur plays Calamity Jane and Charles Bickford plays the bad guy who sells weapons to the Indians and you can hardly recognize him. This was the first time Cecil B. DeMille and Gary Cooper worked together and the next movie the made was basically the same but set in a different time. This movie starts out with Lincoln's assassination and it also deals with an Indian war. Calamity Jane is in love with Wild Bill and Buffalo Bill has gotten married and now wants to stay home. This movie also deals with Custer's last stand and is far from accurate. Gary Cooper is good as usual and i usually don't like Jean Arthur but i liked her here.