Surprisingly incoherent and boring

It's hard to see any effort in the film. There's no comedy to speak of, no real drama and, worst of all.

This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

The plot premise is quite simple and a good western big picture style comedy for something from Hollywood in tail end of the innocent mid- 60's. It has a solid cast but the direction has them playing stereotype roles (stern commander, intolerant temperance leader, greedy business man, etc so nothing really great -- just good.The movie does runs too long in the second half during the encampment phase (all participants in the same area) after the sandstorm and would have benefited for a shorter run time. I consider this its primary negative.It carries on a theme that seems to have started in the 60's with comedies (TV) in having catch phrases such "good tax payer and good Republican" used repeatedly although not that memorable.

Schlock and drek amid some regional (but OK) locations. Reminds one of "Paint Your Wagon": What is the point of sitting thru this ham-handed baloney? It must be obvious that Burt and Ms. Remick have done much, much better elsewhere. The plot is ludicrous. A slice of the Old West that never happened, at least as told here. Yes, everyone involved put in a valiant effort but, again, what's the point? True, this is supposed to be a comedic take on the Western as morality play, but even a comedy Western requires a credible plot grounded with a dash of reality, which just doesn't exist here. Another '60s example of, What were they thinking? but for the dollar signs in their eyeballs. UA distributed many fine films from the Mirsh Corp.; sadly, this was not one of them.

When considering how to rate and reflect on some movies, one needs to consider the time at which they were made, styles and mores of that time, and decide if your mental state is ready for a movie of that type.One example would be "Pillow Talk" ... a very funny movie from the early 60s, but one which is extremely tame by the standards of the last 30 years or so.Among westerns, "The Hallelujah Trail" is another such example. The romance is tame, the violence fails to actually ever hurt anyone (a good thing), and the comedy is full of misdirection and bluster. The story and its elements are very tame by recent standards, but I never fail to be entertained when I watch this movie. I've always enjoyed one line in particular from the film, a take-off on a famous Churchhill quote (and I'm sure I paraphrase); "Never have so many bullets been fired at so many targets in such a small area with so few casualties". This after an epic battle scene involving cavalry, miners, a booze "wagon train", an Indian tribe, and a group of lady prohibition crusaders.The narration of the film adds a special touch. Its unusual but also quite funny.There is also a very talented cast in this movie, led by Burt Lancaster, and so for that reason alone it's not surprise that the film is solid and entertaining.Is it a blockbuster caliber film? No. But if you're caught in on a rainy Saturday afternoon and catch it on cable, you won't be disappointed, either.

The Hallelujah Trail came out in 1965, just as the traditional era of "Hollywood" movie-making was giving way to the modern era of the auteur and the independent filmmaker. In a classic big-time Hollywood production of that distant age, what wanted and got was (hopefully!) a funny story, a clever script, some big personalities for the leads and familiar character actors to support them. While Hallelujah Trail is a little long, it works if you enjoy spending a couple of hours with Burt Lancaster, Lee Remick, Brian Keith, Martin Landau, and Donald Pleasance dressing up in their Western outfits modes and having a good old time with some eye-popping stunts, hilariously pompous speeches, and cutting one-liners. .Amazingly, though Hallelujah Trail came out only a decade before Blazing Saddles, they represent comedy traditions so different that comparing them is like comparing As You Like It with The Three Stooges with The Importance of Being Earnest with Hot Shots! All different comedy animals with their own conventions and audiences. HT isn't as funny as Support Your Local Sheriff, a small scale, sharply done spoof on the same genre, but much funnier than John Wayne and Maureen O'Hara in McClintock or any the dubious comedy westerns Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra put out at the same time.The Indians in this film, unfortunately, are the drunken, amoral layabouts, played by white actors, similar to the Indians in F-Troop. This is just something you run into in old movies, and in Hallelujah Trail it is easier to overlook, as the "white" characters are made to look no less foolish.A historic note might be in order, here. Racial stereotyping wasn't a frivolous issue back in 1965. Back then a sizable chunk of the population then more or less believed in the stereotypes of Indians as either noble savages, faceless, brutal savages, or drunken, violent losers. Conventiontial portraits of Indians in film reinforced those stereotypes, adding to the burden of impoverished Amerindians trying to make a living and a life in the real world. It was also quite true that real Amerindians found it next to impossible to get work in Hollywood as anything but extras and "Indian" roles in Westerns routinely went to white actors with an "ethnic" look to them. Consequently, it wasn't "brave" to show negative stereotypes of Indians in 1965, it was what everyone else was doing and it did cause actual harm. It still does, actually, but the issue is obscured by modern jargon—scolding about "insensitivity" and scoffing about "political correctness." Back in the fifties and sixties, when moral issues could be discussed without deferring to the self-indulgence of the individual, you could make a point about racism in blunter terms.