Wagon Master
Director: John Ford
Year Released: 1950
Rating: 2.0
Puffy Ford Western contains what some critics claim is "poetic realism," but that's really just another way of saying it's a paper-thin - if visually appealing - genre picture. Two young bucks (Ben Johnson and Harry Carey, Jr.) and their horses tag along with a bunch of travelling Mormons who like to sing and dance and not cuss and spread the Mormon way - hell, they even get along with the damn Indians, fer chrissake - before a band of nasties (led by the fantastic James Arness) meet up with them and act brutish (meaning: they provide action this so wildly craves). It's an episodic and breezy trot through dirt.
