From my favorite movies..

It's not great by any means, but it's a pretty good movie that didn't leave me filled with regret for investing time in it.

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

Any series that tries to paint a psychotic murdering thug like Jesse James as something of a nice guy, just isn't going to work. It tries to excuse him by saying the war changed him, no he was a terrorist during the war, not having the courage to put on a uniform he joined a group of murderous thugs who shot down unarmed Union Soldiers.(Centralia) The whole series is full of such appalling inaccuracies it is difficult to pick just a couple. Start with the firearms, all totally wrong. When you know that certain people used certain weapons why give them anything else? Billy the Kid's enemies were called The House? No they were the Santa Fe Ring whose store and headquarters was called the house. As for all the other parts of Billy's story surely the end of him was the worst. We know what happened, why completely invent this final shooting? No mention of the other major players such as McSween etc. As for Wyatt Earp whole swathes have been omitted. His problems with John Behan for example, the fact that he was married and having an affair with Mattie, but worst of all having Virgil and Morgan shot on the same night. And what about Bat Masterson and his brother Ed? Leaving them out of the story is rather like leaving the whale out of Moby Dick. A appalling mess all round and something to be ashamed of.

This mini-series produced by Robert Redford puts together some of the most iconic figures and events in the old American West highlighted by Jesse James, Billy the Kid, Wyatt Earp, George Armstrong Custer, Crazy Horse, and Sitting Bull starting from the end of the Civil War to the Oklahoma land rush some 25 years later. It ends with a surprising final connection between Wyatt Earp and John Wayne. The recreations are compelling enough and expertly made for a TV production. The actors portraying the historical figures are relative unknowns. In fact, the series use a mix of historians and much more famous actors as talking heads to explain the significance of the events. As for its history educational value, this show cherry-picks the most compelling stories of the most compelling characters. It lays it out in order which gives the widely known stories their proper place in the chronological order. This helps to give them context and a surprisingly effective flow. It is able to paint a vast epic picture of a changing world.

If you're going to make a documentary series about the same old people as every other documentary series, at least be accurate. Find something new. Offer perspective. Reveal details and nuance which make the information fresh. This series does none of it. It's dull, boring, trite and poorly produced at all levels. After an interesting series like "Hell on Wheels", AMC embarrassed itself by running this waste of time. The director, producers and writers should be ashamed of themselves for the shoddy, lazy product they put together.

For me and for most Americans there is nothing more interesting than the story of the West. From the Civil War until World War 1, the West was full of adventure, opportunity, drama and tragedy. AMCs series "Hell on Wheels" was an excellent attempt to portray one aspect of this period, the building of the railroads. But their far more ambitious "The American West" is a big disappointment on a number of levels.For a documentary, the use of "expert" opinion from movie stars is hardly a good idea. Have we stooped so low that we get our history from movie stars?Perhaps the reliance on movie stars for the primary documentation is one of the reasons this 8 part series has so many errors (e.g., Jesse James and Billy the Kid met, Wyatt Earp went to Tombstone to be their Sheriff).Another weakness of the series is that there is no real underlying theme. There are brief episodes about Jesse James (Missouri), Billy the Kid (New Mexico), Wyatt Earp (Kansa and Arizona), and Custer and Sitting Bull (the Dakotas). But there is no real glue that holds the episodes together (e.g., the demands of capitalism to obtain natural resources, the political post war climate, the economic problems and the challenges of currency, etc.)Telling the story of the West is an important project, but this series fails to do it in a meaningful way. FWIW - I really like the TV series "Centennial" (1978-79) and "Hell on Wheels" (2011-16). They both gave a comprehensive history of the West and did so in a more entertaining manner. For sheer pleasure, "Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid" (1973) is my favorite telling of this story.