I’ve always found it a bit odd that Errol Flynn made so many Western movies, but I have to admit, he generally works pretty well in them. The Old West was a little more cosmopolitan place that it’s usually given credit for.
MONTANA is one of Flynn’s Westerns that I hadn’t seen until recently. It’s also one of the two movies where he plays an Australian, his true nationality. DESPERATE JOURNEY, which I watched and reviewed a while back, is the other.
Flynn’s character, Morgan Lane, is a sheepman whose father was run out of Montana at the point of a gun years earlier by the cattle barons who rule the range. He’s determined to return and establish a sheep ranch there, gaining a measure of revenge for what happened to his father. The cattle barons, led by beautiful Alexis Smith and her smarmy fiance Douglas Kennedy, threaten to wipe out Flynn and his sheep before they’ll let them ruin the cattle range. There’s also a colorful peddler/medicine wagon owner, played by S.Z. “Cuddles” Sakall, who gets involved in the clash, plus various sheepherders working for Flynn and cowboys/gunmen working for Smith and Kennedy.
Naturally, Flynn and Smith fall for each other, despite being on opposite of this war. There are fistfights, cattle stampedes, sheep stampedes, and the occasional gunfight. Plus lots of talk. Since the script is based on a story by Ernest Haycox, you could expect that. (Not a pulp story but rather an original story written for Hollywood, from what I gather.)
There’s nothing here you haven’t seen many times before. But the movie looks pretty good most of the time, Flynn is his usual charming self, and director Ray Enright (with an uncredited assist from Raoul Walsh) keeps things moving along at a decent pace. MONTANA is about as generic a Western as you’ll ever see, but sometimes that’s exactly what I want and I enjoyed it.
3 comments:
1950 was the year everything started going off the rails for Flynn.
I sometimes wonder what would have happened had he lived long enough for the spaghetti western to come into vogue.
Three of Flynn's Westerns were among the best in the genre: DODGE CITY, VIRGINIA CITY, and THEY DIED WITH THEIR BOOTS ON. The later ones like MONTANA and SAN ANTONIO weren't quite at that level, but still worth seeing. I agree, James, Alexis Smith was a beautiful actress. She and Flynn had pretty good on-screen chemistry.
Think Flynn was off the rails forever. In the 50s it just caught up with him. ‘My Wicked Wicked Ways” is a great autobiography.
I love virtually all his movies.
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