Perry Kate Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

UnowPriceless hyped garbage

Griff Lees Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

Verity Robins Great movie. Not sure what people expected but I found it highly entertaining.

Jackson Booth-Millard From director Howard Hawks (Scarface, Bringing Up Baby, To Have and Have Not, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes), this is a film I found in the book 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die, so I hoped it would live up to that designation. Basically set in 1832, frontiersman and Indian trader Jim Deakins (Kirk Douglas) and Boone Caudill (Dewey Martin) are initially hostile to each other, but soon become friends and head for the Missouri River to find Boone's uncle Zeb Calloway (Oscar nominated Arthur Hunnicutt). They find him in jail and are put in a cell with him, for brawling with fur traders of the Missouri River Company, 'Frenchy' Jourdonnais (Steven Geray) comes to bail him, and is talked into letting the other two out as well, and Jim and Boone join Zeb and Frenchy to travel 2000 miles on an expedition up the river to trade with the Blackfoot Indians, in competition with the Missouri Company. The posse have with them pretty Blackfoot woman Teal Eye (Elizabeth Threatt) who Zeb found several years ago after she escaped an enemy tribe, he plans to use her as a hostage, being the daughter of a chief. On the journey they encounter Poordevil (Hank Worden), another Blackfoot that Zeb knows, Teal Eye falls into the river and is rescued from rapids by Boone, but she is captured by Streak (Jim Davis) from a party of The Missouri Company, they try to set fire to the group's boat, but Frenchy wakes in time to stop severe damage. The expedition reaches Blackfeet and trading begins, Teal Eye tells a very disappointed Jim she loves him, like a brother, Boone is surprised to find later that she is married, but she makes him buy her so that her father is allowed to leave anytime he wishes, in the end when winter is approaching the men start the long journey back, but Boone decides to stay with Teal Eye. Also starring Buddy Baer as Romaine and Henri Letondal as La Badie. I agree with the critics that Dougles is good but perhaps a little too suave and intense, and I can see Hunnicutt was nominated an Oscar, the black and white film definitely has great landscape scenes and is pretty well acted, my only problem with it was that it was a bit slow for the majority, only the action sequences saved it being from being boring, I'm not sure it's the sort of film I'd see again, but it's not a bad western adventure. It was nominated the Oscar for Best Cinematography. Worth watching!

Ric-7 I love this film--it makes me feel good every time I watch it. I'd seen it when I was a child, and loved it then. However, for decades later, I confused it with The Far Horizons which was released a few years later. Could there be two upriver boat adventures involving a pair of heroes and one Indian princess? Sure enough.The film may not be faithful to Guthrie's novel, but there were too many unmarketable items, such as having heroes with dark sides, and a generally "down" ending. Rape, murder, and racial hatred are not usually found light-hearted adventures. A film with serious characters who experience adult problems is not something that could be sold to kids, such as myself when I first saw the film. For example, I saw The Searchers when I was a kid, and was clueless. I vastly preferred The Big Sky. More fun.So if you take the book and subtract the adult themes and plot elements, you are left with a film that was hugely entertaining to kids, as well as to any adult looking for pure escapism.

derekcreedon Like RED RIVER it's in black-and-white, which some find disappointing. For me it's always given the material an agreeably unglamourised flavour like its predecessor but then I was raised in the age when b/w was still the norm. A lot of it takes place at night, in any case, in the arc-lit woodlands of RKO, which does develop a certain claustrophobia. It's quite a dark film in many ways with much emphasis on physical pain, injury and impairment. People are whipped, hobbled, stabbed, shot, one guy gets an arrow in the neck, another a burning brand in the face - and the mighty Kirk has a dislocated finger amputated with the help of whisky in a scene angled for comedy but which isn't very funny. Even the head-baddie's a cripple.As a happy-go-lucky mountain-man who joins a French fur-trading expedition up the Missouri River Kirk starts out amusingly in Ned Land chucklehead mode with even a song thrown in but becomes increasingly brusque and modernistic perhaps to compensate for the fact that he's not the driving force here. At the same time I like the way Hawks makes him a team player, sitting back to listen to other actors doing their thing and not even getting the girl in the end. That prize is won by his buddy, played by the slick shifty-looking Dewey Martin with his Tony Curtis quiff but none of the Curtis charm, unfortunately. Inter-racial love stories in Westerns were all the rage at the time but the Indian bride usually got killed - an idyll denied an ongoing reality. Not here, though. As the Blackfoot princess Elizabeth Threatt is sensational. A tall mysterious lady with a cat-like grace and a haughty mien but with sudden flashes of great good humour she's very much a Hawks Woman - practical, resourceful and able to call her own shots when the time comes - and all without a single word of English dialogue. There are a couple of sly filches from THE OUTLAW (which Hawks was directing before Howard Hughes fired him) including the famous "I'll keep him warm" scene. Rumour has it that Kirk demanded 15 takes just to get it right - no I'm joking but it's a cute thought.Out on the river in daylight Hawks and Russell Harlan conjure up some marvellously fluid imagery for which Harlan was Oscar-nominated but didn't win. Ditto Arthur Hunnicutt who oozes authenticity as the guide/interpreter with his tall tales and seasoned wisdom. He's also Martin's uncle and there's some deft undercutting of myth when it's revealed that Martin's sledgehammer punches are the result of a bullet-pouch clenched in his fist and that his former prejudice against Indians is based on one of Uncle's stories ("I talk too much."). But he finally renounces prejudice off his own bat without knowing the story to be a lie. Tiomkin's exquisite score is sprung on three main themes - the epic journey, the Indian presence and a beautiful love-song sung by the Frenchmen as a remembrance of home. At the close Martin elects to remain with his bride and her people while his companions prepare to return downriver - for them a thousand-mile journey, for him "just a step and a holler" home to bed. For the audience a classic juxtaposition of movie-dreaming and our own reality. The 'Mandan' and its crew recede into infinity in our minds like a 'trip round the universe', such a long long way. But like Martin we can simply go home now, the show's over. We put on our coats and file out of the old fleapit (I'm talking 1952 here) just a step and a holler from our own private teepees.To correct a previous poster the guy who got it in the neck was Pascal, played by Booth Colman.

Neil Doyle If ever a sprawling tale about an expedition up the Missouri river to trade furs begged for Technicolor photography, THE BIG SKY is it. Based on the novel by A.B. Guthrie, it has KIRK DOUGLAS in the lead as the head of the expedition but most of the footage belongs to young DEWEY MARTIN in his first big screen role. Why he never managed to become a more important player in Hollywood remains a mystery to me.Unfortunately, Dudley Nichols' screenplay is rather episodic and there are many points toward the end of the film where it seems the story is about to end and then there are further scenes. I found none of the narration objectionable (as others here seem to imply), but the structure of the screenplay is awkwardly handled, especially toward the latter part of the film.Another minus point, the night scenes in the woods look as though they were photographed in a studio and not on location which minimizes the sense of danger from Indians and other trappers that the story requires. But most of the exterior daylight scenes are photographed in crisp B&W photography in real outdoor settings which tend to jar against the studio-lit scenes, making them more noticeable.There's plenty of male camaraderie and friendship among the trappers and colorful incidents involving the Indians, so if this kind of western is your thing you'll undoubtedly find it interesting. I watched the 140 minute version on TCM and it was slow going at times.Summing up: Biggest drawback: should definitely have been filmed in breathtaking Technicolor.