The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

I am only giving this movie a 1 for the great cast, though I can't imagine what any of them were thinking. This movie was horrible

Easily the biggest piece of Right wing non sense propaganda I ever saw.

The movie is made so realistic it has a lot of that WoW feeling at the right moments and never tooo over the top. the suspense is done so well and the emotion is felt. Very well put together with the music and all.

"The Great K & A Train Robbery" is an action packed Tom Mix western in which he plays a special agent Tom Gordon called in to help railroad president Eugene Cullen (William Walling solve the hold-ups of his railway. Tom arrives but unknown to Cullen, is working undercover as a masked bandit in order to study the railroad gang's movements. Cullen's daughter Madge (Dorothy Dean) is on her way home when gang leader Bill Tolfree (Edward Piel Sr.) decides that the kidnapping of Madge would yield a large ransom payment.Tom, who had been listening in hiding to the gang's plans, rescues Madge and escapes the gang's clutches. Madge becomes attracted to the devil may care bandit while Cullen's secretary Burton Holt (Carl Miller) looks on jealously. Holt, it turns out is a snake in the grass, informing the gang of upcoming bank shipments.While escaping from Cullen's private train, Tom meets hobo Deluxe Harry (Harry Grippe) riding beneath the private railway car. It turns out that Harry had served under Tom in another life. To make a long story short, Harry overhears Holt telling Tolfree of the railway's plans to move the shipment of gold bonds from the original train to Cullen's private train.Using a pull car, Harry races to inform Tom of Holt's deceit. Tom manages to foil the robbery and gives the box containing the bonds to Harry for safekeeping. However Holt shoots Harry down and takes the box and flees. It turns out that the gang has a secret underwater cave hideout. Tom follows Holt to the hideout and..................................................................In this action packed film, we are treated to many spectacular stunts. Mix is supposed to have performed them but I can't see the studio allowing him perform the most dangerous ones. The stunts involving sliding down a rope or crossing a ravine are shown in long shots where you cannot see the faces. The hard ridin' was probably done by Mix and his horse Tony.Plenty of gunplay (although I don't remember anyone getting killed), ridin' , ropin'and fisticuiffs to satisfy all of Mix's fans. You have to laugh when Mix first enters the bandit's hideout by swimming underwater, and comes up in the cave with his hat on.The character of "Snowball" (Curtis McHenry) is typical of the movie industry's portrayal of African-Americans during this period. He is used as comedy relief in a low and demeaning manner. Pity.

. . . to focus on THE GREAT K & A TRAIN ROBBERY's Racism, Sexism, poor continuity, implausible plot, or clumsy acting. There's a saying that crops up in nearly every discussion of American Film: When in Doubt, Blame John Wayne. Before he kicked his bucket, Marion--as he was known in his K&A Days--apparently told this site (or its forerunner) that he was an "extra" among the cast for this Tom Mix vehicle. If so, his Face Time here would make most of Brit Director Alfred Hitchcock's famed but extremely fleeting cameo appearances look like featured roles by way of comparison with Marion's "work" in this flick and the rest of his first 20 or 30 claimed "parts." A VHS release from the 1900s for another alleged entry in Marion's filmography called THE DROP-KICK actually highlighted his literal face-in-the-crowd "role," which lasted approximately nine-tenths of one second. Though the box for that tape gave Marion equal billing with DROP-KICK's principle players, the case for K&A's 2003 Grapevine DVD release states that K&A was released in 1924, when 17-year-old Marion was still moping around in high school over his parent's ahead-of-their-time divorce, rather than in 1926, when a 19-year-old Marion had just dropped out of college due to what forensic psychologists have concluded was some sort of a male-on-male sexual assault by an unknown number of his college football teammates. (Only 2% of such incidents came to the attention of the not-always-sympathetic Authorities during the 1920s, and this small fraction that WAS reported nearly always involved one or more fatalities.) In other words, the Grapevine people are trying to avoid connecting this film with the sordid details of Marion's deflowering by NOT mentioning him at all, and purposely back-dating K&A's release to a year when Marion could NOT have been involved in it (which means that Grapevine might back-date its upcoming "public domain" release of GONE WITH THE WIND to 1858--BEFORE the novel was written, the battles were fought, Atlanta was burned, or movies were invented--if it felt a Politically Correct Need to do so).

Cullen, president of the K & A railroad, is at a loss to stop the robberies occurring on his line, even though he is unaware his secretary, Holt, is secretly tipping off the bandits with the shipments. Tom Morgan is called on to investigate, even though he needs to disguise himself as an outlaw in order infiltrate Tolfree's gang and hear their plans. When Cullen decides to send a shipment of bonds with him on another train, Holt tells Tolfree, who's going to lead his gang into robbery unless Tom's assistant, a hobo named Deluxe Harry, can relay the information to him in time. This is one of the more enjoyable Mix silents (of which there are still way too few) with a brisk pace, exciting chases, thrilling stunts throughout, and an exciting climax in an underground cave. A prologue to the film points out the exterior shots being in Glenwood Springs, Colorado, and they are very striking adding a lot of beauty to the picture. I think the film tried to be too mysterious with Mix' characterization and the character of the butler could have been eliminated since Deluxe Harry fit in well as the comic relief. Rating 8.

Contrary to the IMDb rating and its reputation, this movie is very good. If you are a fan of westerns but are tired of all the talking and waiting, of endless meaningful glances and a meditative rhythm and you want some ACTION, get this film! This is one of the best action films of all time, with some exemplary stunt work. The storyline is easy to follow, but without any plot holes as has become a standard nowadays. Tom Mix is a great Cowboy and fits the character he is portraying wonderfully. Don't get me wrong, I love Douglas Fairbanks, and admire his artistry, but besides his greater charm, he is nowhere as good as Tom Mix in this film. This is meant as an invitation to all Fairbanks' fans, because this will be exactly their kind of film. At 53 minutes, the film never drags and does what it set out to do almost perfectly. If only more films where this modest.