Who payed the critics

ridiculous rating

Perfectly adorable

This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

Hard-driving Kirk Douglas organizes a wagon train to Oregon, hiring mountain man Robert Mitchum to lead the way and squaring off with Indians, the elements, and hostility among the settlers, particularly hard-headed farmer Richard Widmark.Almost universally panned and patronized as director Andrew V. McLaglen's attempt to ape the style of his mentor John Ford, it's actually an innocuous, inoffensive adventure saga in the mold of How The West Was Won or Raoul Walsh's The Big Trail, though not as good as those films. It's still fairly watchable, except for the endless, obnoxious subplots featuring teenage Sally Field and her deflowering by a married, frustrated loser!Douglas and especially Mitchum are excellent, as usual. However, Widmark falls a little short, thanks to a less than interesting character, though he's always a welcome presence in anything he's involved in.

This western is very unusual in that it features three top leading men--Kirk Douglas, Robert Mitchum and Richard Widmark. Now you'd think with all this high-octane masculinity and acting that this would be a terrific film, well, you'd be wrong. While it isn't a bad film, it does suffer from a thoroughly adequate script--one that never seems to deliver the goods.Douglas plays an ex-senator bent on starting the first white colony in Oregon in 1848. The problem is that he's not exactly 'Mr. Personality'--and his abrasive and autocratic ways rub everyone in the wagon train wrong. Can he get them all to his promised land or will the folks ditch him and make for California? Tune in and see.For the most part, this is a pretty ordinary drama about settling the West. As for Douglas, he overacts more than usual (and what's with that whipping scene?!?!). Widmark's character is inconsistent and underwritten. The only lead who comes off well is Mitchum--as a weary Kit Carson-type. Aside from being pretty ordinary and predictable, the film did have a few pluses. There was nice cinematography and as a history teacher, I appreciated how they showed lots of mules, oxen and cows pulling the wagons--whereas most films only show horses (a mistake). But this isn't enough to raise it above mediocrity.

Westerns and musicals were the staples of cinema from the late 30s through to the late 60s. Then tastes changed, and both genres went out of fashion. Before they did so, The Way West appeared on the screen.It is an absolutely traditional western in the old style, telling the story of a wagon train carrying a mixed batch of settlers to a new life, with the story being a mixture of the trials and tribulations they encounter on the way, and the soapy goings on among the people travelling. Among the former are Indians, crossing a deep canyon etc., and among the latter are the power struggles between those in charge (Kirk Douglas, Richard Widmark, Robert Mitchum - similar to the battle for top billing, one imagines), and the saucy antics of little Mercy McBee (Sally Field in her first credited movie role, putting in a performance which manages to be winsome and slutty all at the same time).This movie looks great - the landscape photography is wonderful - but is otherwise a completely routine western of the old school.

This film was, in parts, historically wanting. For instance, there is a conflict in the time-line concerning the year of travel and the discovery of gold in California. The movie ends short of some of the most dangerous travel on the Oregon Trail.The scenery is great and the landmarks added a sense of reality. I enjoyed seeing most wagons pulled by oxen, as emigrants preferred the sturdy animal over horses or mules.Characterizations left a bit to be desired. While the acting was adequate there was no depth to any individual. That aside, it was worth watching for the cast alone.The story had possibilities but came up short.