Chirphymium It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

Humbersi The first must-see film of the year.

BelSports This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

Ella-May O'Brien Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

LeonLouisRicci It is True that Randolph Scott Made a Few Good Westerns that were Not Directed by Budd Boetticher and This is One of Them. More Complicated than Most Silly Fifties Westerns that were Synonymous and Shallow.This is All About Carpet Baggers and Their Stealing from the Good Texan Folks. The Cavalry is On the Scene but have Little Authority Because It Seems that Most of What They Are Doing is Within the Law. But as We're Told by Hokey and Stiff 1950's Style Narration, It's Not Right.Scott is an Army Captain, a Native Texan and is Conflicted Carrying Out Orders. Lex Barker Shows Up and is Nothing but a Varmint in a Uniform. He Shoots Guys in the Back and has No Problem with Trying to Steal Scott's Wife Played by a Very Cute Phyllis Kirk.Charles McGraw Turns In His Fedora for a Cowboy Hat as an Antagonist to the Army and the Sleazy Carpet Baggers (Elisha Cook and Hugh Sanders), but Not the Locals. Pay Attention if You Want to Know What Side Everyones On.Overall, Above Average, In Color (but not Widescreen), Although the Musical Score with a Heavy Emphasis on "Deep in the Heart of Texas" is Irritating. In Fact this is So Texas Centric that a Better and More Accurate Title would have been..."Thunder Over the Texas Plains". Don't Know How They Missed That.

Spondonman There's just too many baddies in this film for me to consider this as anything other than an average Randolph Scott Western. Even the nearly-good people have perverse traits – who the Hell are we supposed to care about!Tale set in post Civil War Texas where carpetbaggers ruled almost supreme, and the occupying Federal troops seemed to let them. There's a gang of patriotic outlaws led by a Robin Hood character trying to redress the balance and a complicated set of sympathies and antagonisms with which to contend. And Lex Barker was playing a nutter. But if I correctly remember my extensive Frank Yerby reading when I was a kid surely in reality the Ku Klux Klan couldn't have been far away in matters of this kind in their role of Southern saviours? There's time in this shortish formula fiction film for lots of plot twists, cold business, love, jealousy, rage, backstabbings, murders galore, some honour and integrity, all of it delivered with plenty of panache, a nice colour and sporadically excellent camera-work.It's enjoyable hokum up to a point but ultimately loses its way because there's no one you can really root for but many you can root against. Naturally, Scott is as dependable as usual.

Theo Robertson The American Civil War has ended four years earlier and Texas valiantly still refuses to join the Union . Carpetbaggers from the north dominate the economic landscape sticking their talons in to the population of Texas . Rebel Ben Westman becomes a folk hero fighting both the carpetbaggers and army of occupation . Texas born federal army captain David Porter is ordered to hunt Westman down Carpetbagger is a word I've heard of for a very long time but it it's only recently that I've found out that it's a noun and derogatory term given to Northern businessmen who moved south to make a fast and cruel buck in the reconstruction of the South . You can rely on Americans to cheer the underdog and Westman is referenced in the opening narration as being a modern day Robin Hood so the audience quickly know whose side to takeOne thing that sticks out is that watching THUNDER OVER THE PLAINS in 2013 is that the entire story could easily be made today as a war drama set in Iraq or Afghanistan with very little modification where an Iraqi/Afghan born US army officer finds himself set against a childhood friend waging a war of resistance against American occupiers . Of course from a moral point of view the audience would then be on the side of the United States and the Westman character would be the standard Hollywood bad guy rather than the noble freedom fighter . On second thoughts it wouldn't be the same story at all That said THUNDER OVER THE PLAINS does have a rather timeless quality to it where audiences are allowed to cheer on someone who isn't necessarily a villain , just someone who is fighting for what he believes in and getting framed for something he didn't do . The film also manages to paint Porter as a man who has a dilemma of being part of a new America which means putting aside earlier friendships while having to do what a man has to do . Add to this the Technicolor cinematography and you've got a film that's far better than what could have been another B movie Western

kenjha In post Civil War Texas, an Army captain is charged with bringing in an outlaw who has become a legend for taking on the Carpetbaggers. It begins and ends with hokey narration, but in between there is a fairly interesting story, helped by nice color cinematography. Scott is his usual solid self as the captain. McGraw plays the outlaw, but it is Barker (coming off his final Tarzan movie) as another Army captain that is the real villain here. Kirk does well as Scott's understanding wife. It's not up to the level of Scott's later Westerns with Budd Boetticher, but it's competently directed by de Toth. The final gunfight is too drawn out and somewhat anti-climactic.