I love this movie so much

Purely Joyful Movie!

Perfect cast and a good story

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

This COULD have been a very good film. Nice, strong themes running thru it, but none are really developed. Great cast, but it suffers from very weak direction and gaffs that are simply too serious to ignore.Let's list just a few of the glaring mistakes in the film.1) When the two younger Sacketts are traveling from Texas toward Santa Fe in the first part of the two part series, they are shown amid lots of saguaro cactus. Problem with this is that the saguaro cactus ONLY grows in the Sonoran desert, which is in Arizona, extreme southeast California and the northwest part of Mexico right below Arizona. No such cactus grown in Texas or in NE New Mexico where they were supposed to have been at the time. ANYONE spending any time in Arizona would know this, and anyone in New Mexico or Texas would know that cactus is not there.2) The film was set in 1869 and the year or two before, but the rifles most of the men used in the film were Winchester repeating rifles that were not produced until 1870 and later. But that was a small error compared to the fact that the rifle only holds (I believe) 7 cartridges, though the movie had some of the characters firing about 15 rounds before needing to reload.3) The climactic gunfight at the end of the movie is supposed to be set at "daybreak," though the shadows are all over the place, some of them clearly when the sun is on the horizon and then seconds later when the sun is nearly straight overhead and then back to on the horizon and then back to straight overhead.4) That same climactic gunfight has the three Sackett brothers and a wounded friend facing off against the three Bigelow brothers and four hired gunmen... but the Sacketts kill eight of them. Only seven bad guys there, but the Sacketts kill eight.Now, none of those errors are so serious as to destroy the film if the movie had otherwise been well-made and story lines developed and themes worked within it... but they were not. A terrible waste of some excellent acting talent.

I really felt sorry for some of the classic western actors who ended up participating in this drivel. The whole thing seemed like it was written, directed and edited by a bunch of eighth-graders! It also seemed that it might have been severely edited to reduce the running time, and if that's the case, my criticism might be bit too harsh. Was this perhaps originally a 6-hour movie that was cut down to 4 hours?I can't believe that, at the time this is being written, that IMDb readers have given this an average rating of 7.5. I'm giving it a 1 in hopes that others will too to keep serious movie-watchers from wasting four hours of their time as I did last night.

Funny, I like westerns but have never take the time to read a Louis L'Amour book. If this script is any indication, I don't see what all the fuss is about. While better than 99.9% of the fare on TV in the last decade, this is a definitely no-surprises made-for-TV movie, with the proper breaks in the proper places and everything wrapped up neat and tidy. *Way* too neat and tidy. Those expecting "Lonesome Dove" will be disappointed. Those expecting a few hours of Sam Elliot and Tom Selleck will be happy. Good sneering and facial quivering by Glenn Ford. Always love seeing Ben Johnson in anything. John Vernon always makes a good bad guy, but I would have appreciated seeing him get his towards the end. Being led off to jail wasn't enough. I also liked the bad guy in the bar, blonde, two guns which he (attempted to cross-draw)who Sam Elliot informed he'd have to kill and it would ruin his supper. Don't know the guy's name though.

....you know, Ben Johnson, Slim Pickens, Jack Elam, Sam Elliot, Shug Fisher, James Gammons, etc etc LQ Jones etc. Episodic kinda nature of the show keeps your interest, esp. when you see Sam Elliot come onto the screen. Nothing ground breaking, but check it out if you like either L'amour or Tom Selleck at the least.*** outta ****.