It's no definitive masterpiece but it's damn close.

This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

While it is a pity that the story wasn't told with more visual finesse, this is trivial compared to our real-world problems. It takes a good movie to put that into perspective.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

Another tremendous boxoffice draw of the 1920s was a canine star named Rin-Tin-Tin. Back in my day, every Kodascope Library carried at least five or six Rinty features - all of them so popular that by the mid-30s, the original tinted prints had all worn out and Kodak had replaced the lot with washed-out black-and-white dupes, complete with hosts of railroad lines. One such dupe now available on DVD is Hills of Kentucky (1927), one of Rinty's most popular pictures - and you can see why! It's absolutely crammed full of action, and that dog is really amazing! Director Howard Bretherton does equally well with his human characters, particularly Tom Santschi who plays the villain to perfection and Billy Kent Schaefer who avoids any hint of mawkishness as the crippled little boy - one of the most convincing displays of real acting I've ever seen from a juvenile. This movie is available on a quite watchable 6/10 DVD from Grapevine. Not great, but watchable!