Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A lot of fun if you are not a stickler for American history, 2 May 2003
"Santa Fe Trail" is a fine action film giving viewers another chance to watch Errol Flynn romance Olivia de Havilland, with Ronald Reagan playing the best friend who takes losing out on the girl like a real man. However, the more you know about American history the more likely you are to cringe at some of these going on because Flynn plays James Elwell Brown (J.E.B.) Stuart and Reagan plays George Armstrong Custer. Of course, the year after this 1941 film was released Flynn would play Custer in "They Died With Their Boots On," where once again de Havilland would play his love interest; this time she plays Kit Carson Halliday, but most viewers should be able to realize she is not THAT Kit Carson. Screenwriter Robert Buckner takes some of the better known generals from the Civil War--Stuart, Custer, Sheridan, Longstreet, Pickett, Hood--and turns them into a young band of brothers fresh out of West Point trying to bring order to the frontier at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. All this takes place under the watchful eyes of Colonel Robert E. Lee (Mornoi Olsen), Superintendent of the U.S. Military Academy while the future president of the Confederacy, Jefferson Davis (Erville Alderson), is Secretary of War.The true Civil War history buff will marvel every time the film gets something right (e.g., Stuart really did graduate from West Point in 1854), because mostly it gets things wrong (e.g., Custer finished last in his class in 1861; Oliver Otis Howard graduated in 1854 with Stuart, but he was just another corps commander in the Union Army of the Potomac). The film does end on an ominous note with Lee commanding the troops that capture John Brown (Raymond Massey, who plays the same role in 1955's "Seven Angry Men) at Harpers Ferry. The title for the film has to do with the fact that Kit's father, railroad magnate Cyrus K. Holliday (Henry O'Neill), wants to extend to railroad along the Sante Fe Trail. However, we usually associate the trail with westward expansion and not the slavery issue, which is what gives this film what historical gravity it maintains. The easiest explanation for the difference between history and this film would be the tagline, which declares: "They carved a path through the wilderness... then paved it with bullets and lives!" Screenwriter Robert Buckner does get some points for coming up with some real figures, even if he jettisoned their real history and left it to the audience to figure out which characters would end up on which side fighting against each other in the Civil War. As an action film "Santa Fe Trail" is better than "They Died With Their Boots On," and the character Flynn plays better deserves are sympathies.
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5 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Flynn romances de Havilland on the eve of the Civil War, 6 April 2003
By A Customer
"Santa Fe Trail" is a fine action film giving viewers another chance to watch Errol Flynn romance Olivia de Havilland, with Ronald Reagan playing the best friend who loses out on the gal. Just to make things interesting in this 1940 film directed by Michael Curtiz, Flynn plays James Elwell Brown (J.E.B.) Stuart and Reagan plays George Armstrong Cuter (Olivia is Kit Carson Halliday, but she's not THAT Kit Carson). Screenwriter Robert Buckner takes some of the better known generals from the Civil War--Stuart, Custer, Sheridan, Longstreet, Pickett, Hood--and turns them into a young band of brothers out to bring order to the frontier at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. The true Civil War history buff will marvel every time the film gets something right (e.g., Stuart really did graduate from West Point in 1954), and the film ends on an ominous note with Robert E. Lee (Moroni Olson) commanding the troops that capture John Brown (Raymond Massey) at Harpers Ferry. I am not complaining because I saw a movie version of "Moby Dick" where Ahab kills the whale, so I certainly do not expect much from Hollywood at that point in time. So when the characters never actually make it as far as the Santa Fe Trail, I am not overly surprised. As the tagline for "Santa Fe Trail" declared: "They carved a path through the wilderness... then paved it with bullets and lives!" Flynn gets the girl, Reagan helps him get the bad guys, and Alan Hale provides some comic relief as legendary scout Tex Bell. For my money the action sequences are better in "Santa Fe Trail" than when Flynn gets his chance to play Custer in "They Died With Their Boots On."
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