Dynamixor The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

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.

Fatma Suarez The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

Philippa All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

WildBullWriter This documentary mini-series does a decent job of covering such a huge, complex subject in 9 episodes (about 10 hours of time). I like that appropriate focus and time given to American Indians, who played such a crucial role in the story, and to other groups like Latinos, blacks, and Chinese immigrants who played vital roles, as well.(I'm also offended by a number of reviewers who complain that too much screen time is given to Indians and minorities. These same reviewers complain that whites aren't credited enough for their courage and virtues in subduing the "wild west" and "civilizing" the Indians. The irony is that these reviewers are the very sort of racist people who caused so much trouble and misery while the real history was being played out!)On the whole, I do recommend watching this mini-series.

p25735-261-505738 I started watching this series with the apprehension that they may focus too much on happened to Native Americans and portray them solely as innocent victims and portray all whites as evil perpetrators, but I was pleasantly surprised to find a pretty good balance. Yes, whites did do some terrible things to innocent people, but the native tribes also did terrible things to each other. This allowed me to enjoy the series, that is, until the last third. At that point, it seems 80% of the focus was on Native Americans and their plight, and many of the commentators became annoying by trying to wax too poetically in their analyses. It's a shame because some parts, especially the part about the building of the Transcontinental Railroad (episode 5) was very good.

djlixx This series could have been so much more. Instead it seemed like they focused on the same story line (strife between settlers and native Americans) and drug it out for 9 episodes. Sure that deserves a lot of attention, but I found events and story lines I was hoping for missing completely. Where was the 'Wild West?' The gunslingers, the train robbers? So many criminals not even mentioned. Butch Cassidey, Sundance Kid, Jesse James, Doc Holiday. That list could go on forever. Also the only focused on two Indians: Sitting Bull and Chief Joseph. How about Geronimo? Crazy Horse gets barely a mention. So many events just glossed over and the viewer is left with mostly boring stories. Donner party barely gets a mention also. Oil is never even mentioned!I lost all interest after the railroad episode. Love letters? Mormons? I kept holding out for stories I wanted to hear about but soon realized we were into the 1880's and they passed over most of what I wanted to hear.

Joe Garrick Burns and Ives combine to produce a work that's very much up to Ken Burns' standards. As a viewing experience, it's everything you'd expect.And then there's the content.Much has been made about the supposed bias of Burns' presentation of the history of the west. A lot of time was spent on the way the US treated the indigenous populations, on the crimes of the US military, on the theft of lands, and the systematic attempts to eradicate native cultures. The loss of the age before white settlement is lamented. Is this a balanced perspective? Maybe not, although I don't think it's as biased as other reviews would have you believe. The triumphs of the west are told as well as the losses. Not all whites are painted as evil, nor are all natives painted as innocent. Events are often just told as they happened, and the viewer is left to draw their own conclusions. A lot of the content doesn't concern native Americans at all. More important that all of that, however, is that it's a story that needs telling. Americans have been indoctrinated with romantic fictions about the west for over a century. Giving Burns a chance to tell the other side of the story doesn't seem too much to ask. A few Hollywood movies that paint the indigenous people of America before westward expansion as noble savages - also a pleasant fiction, incidentally - does not make up for a century of bias, misinformation, and outright lies taught to American schoolchildren. What's worse is that for the most part, these fictions are still taught to American schoolchildren. At nearly nine hours, The West is an experience that will take up several of your evenings, but it's nine hours that may change the way you think about American history.