recommended

All that we are seeing on the screen is happening with real people, real action sequences in the background, forcing the eye to watch as if we were there.

The movie is surprisingly subdued in its pacing, its characterizations, and its go-for-broke sensibilities.

Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

Abolitionist John Brown (Raymond Massey) is on the warpath to end slavery by any means necessary. Jeb Stuart (Errol Flynn) and George Custer (Ronald Reagan) lead the effort to capture him. There's also a romantic triangle subplot involving Flynn, Reagan, and pretty Olivia de Havilland. Historically inaccurate but enjoyable western that can't seem to make to up its mind about what it wants to say. Flynn, de Havilland, and Reagan are all fine but it's Massey who steals every scene he's in. Van Heflin is good in a villainous role. Wonderful WB supporting cast includes Alan Hale, Guinn Williams, Henry O'Neill, and John Litel. Good direction from Michael Curtiz. If you read the rest of the reviews here, you'll see a lot of righteous indignation and bluster from certain types. Some of it's pretty funny. The movie is more balanced and measured than these people are letting on but it does play fast and loose with history as most movies based on historical events and people tend to do.

Even some of the reviews that criticize the distortion of history seem not to know just how wrong, how upside-down the events in this movie are. As one who spent over a year researching John Brown, I can tell you that this film is based on prejudice and long discredited sources. There have been many excellent biographies of Brown in the last couple of decades that are objective, fair and open-minded. If you are interested in the truth of the events so mangled in "Santa Fe Trail," here are two books you could read: "To Purge This Land with Blood" by Stephen B. Oates (1971), and "Patriotic Treason" by Evan Carton (2006). This movie portrays Brown as an evil fraud who is really an enemy of slaves. In reality, Brown remains the greatest white hero to African-Americans. Some pseudo-historians have called him the first terrorist. Terrorists kill innocent civilians massively and randomly. The five men executed by Brown's followers at Pottawatomie were carefully selected. They were participants in the pro-slavery terror in Kansas which had already resulted in the murder of six free-state men and in the sacking of Lawrence; they had declared war on the Browns and other abolitionists. The killing at Pottawatomie was a terrible deed, but a just reprisal in Brown's biblical view. And from a historical perspective, we may ask whether Americans have not always supported fighting back against terror and oppression. It always amazes me to hear John Brown's raid at Harpers Ferry denounced by the same Americans who glorify the colonial farmers who killed British soldiers on their way back from Concord. As if "taxation without representation" was in any way commensurate with slavery, "one hour of which," in Jefferson's words, "is fraught with more misery than ages of that which (the colonials) rose in rebellion to oppose."Of course I realize that for some people, standing up for the truth is just being PC. But they won't have been able to read this far anyway.

Massey's older brother was Vincent Massey, the first Canadian-born Governor General of Canada. Raymond served in the Canadian Army in both WW1&2 (wounded in both); determined to portray Lincoln as well as John Brown as often as he could, once he was an American citizen he only dabbled once in (civilian) politics, appearing in a television endorsement in 1964 in support of conservative Republican presidential nominee Sen. Barry Goldwater (R-AZ.) In it, Massey denounced the Vietnam War, saying Goldwater also opposed it, ending by quoting the famous Goldwater campaign slogan: "You know he's right!" It can be seen on YouTube.

This is an odd film for several reasons. First, the title has nothing to do with the story. Second, the politics are extremely murky, to the point of being deliberately obscure but still unmistakable and, to the modern eye, eyebrow-raising. Third, it features a strange meeting between two future US Presidents. It is perhaps the weirdest Western Hollywood ever made, but, unlike, say, 1970s Westerns that strove mightily to be revisionist and different, this one is unintentionally strange.Errol Flynn stars as JEB Stuart, part of a cadre of West Point graduates who (supposedly) were great friends but who later formed the military leaders of both sides of the Civil War. They politely spar over women, but not so politely against a messianic wild-eyed fanatic who is determined to upset everybody's comfortable life because of his obsession. That madman is one John Brown, who ultimately takes his fight from the wilds of Kansas to the neighborhood of Washington, D.C. The story ultimately devolves into a quite accurate depiction of the John Brown raid on Harper's Ferry and its resolution (Brown's hanging).Anyway, the only reason this film is titled "Santa Fe Trail" is because some of the events in the film take place near that trail's beginning. But that's not the oddest thing about it, not by far. This film takes the extremely politically incorrect position of making abolitionist Brown into the Osama bin Laden of his day and a group of (later Confederate) officers who captured him (Robert E. Lee, JEB Stuart) into the heroes. It doesn't come straight out in the open and say that the Civil War was a bad thing, but it comes darn close. One of the odder scenes is when a former slave tells Stuart, "If this is freedom, I don't want it." Now, try putting THAT into a modern film. Well, you could try, I suppose....The strange sympathy shown for the South and its leaders and its cause isn't the end of the oddities, though. There is a bizarre scene where future General Custer, played by Ronald Reagan (one of Flynn's signature roles was Custer in "They Died with their Boots On," adding to the confusion), dances with a pretty young lady and then is taken to meet her dad - future President Abraham Lincoln! They have a polite exchange, then Ron goes off to fight the evil guy who wants to free the slaves. So one actor playing a future President (this is set two years before Lincoln took office) has a strange and completely unnecessary scene with another actor who actually became President (forty years after this film was made). And the actor who played the strangely shaven Lincoln is completely uncredited anywhere, along with the daughter. Of course, Lincoln didn't even HAVE a daughter! It's all a bit odd and makes my head hurt. One of those strange moments in film history that nobody even noticed but is full of resonance now.Strange politics aside and oddities forgotten for the moment, this is a rousing war drama about some crucial events that otherwise are completely overlooked by Hollywood, probably because of the weird politics involved. The good guys later became the bad guys, and then revered figures in the history books, while the bad guy's cause was completely redeemed by history, so was he really a bad guy at all? Raymond Massey completely steals the film as Brown, playing the character as a complete and utter fanatic with delusions of Godhood and the air of a latter-day Moses freeing the slaves. One of the most mesmerizing performances I've ever seen. It just happens also to be completely confusing as any kind of political statement or interpretation of the man himself and what he stood for.So, OK, it's impossible to put the weirdness aside if you know the history at all. But well worth catching in any event.