UnowPriceless hyped garbage

Comwayon A Disappointing Continuation

BelSports This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

Roman Sampson One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

ctomvelu1 I have now seen all of this six-part miniseries about the settling of the West. This obviously was a massive production, with an incredibly realistic feel for the hardships involved in crossing the country by wagon and trying to eke out a living. A couple of familiar faces are on hand, including Beau Bridges, but this is a team effort with a huge and constantly changing cast as the years roll by. The costumes alone for this movie must have kept an army of seamstresses busy. The film was shot in scenic western Canada, and I cannot imagine how they shot some of the sequences without anyone getting hurt. One amazing bit has ae wagon train crossing a turbulent river, during which some of the wagons tip over in the fast-moving water. I was a little less impressed with the cavalry killing Indians, which has been done to death in other movies. It adds nothing new here. In fact, and not to offend anyone, I found the movie's one comedown to be too much time spent with the Indians. A small complaint on my part, as those sequences are easily fast-forwarded. A must-see, although not a film I would want shown in schools or seen by impressionable people. Too grim,a nd of course the white guys automatically become the clichéd bad guys when it comes to dealing with nonwhites.

irishcoloradan I enjoyed Into the West enough to buy the CD set. I think there were parts where the script was too cliché and not very good, and some others where the acting was poor (Matthew Modine). Also, there were too many instances in which characters were either not developed well enough or completely left hanging (what happened to Abe Wheeler?). But overall, I liked it. While it was historically more accurate than Dances With Wolves (not hard to do), it still offered an overly sympathetic image of the Lakota. In ITW, the poor Lakota are seen as "picked on" by rival tribes, such as the Crow. In fact, the Sioux had been pushed onto the prairie from their previous home west of Lake Superior in the 17th century by the Ojibway. They, in turn, got firearms and pushed the Crow, Cheyenne, Pawnee and others out of the northern plains. They were vicious to these tribes and hated by them. And they had firearms WELL before 1825.

murpz This is an awesome, awesome miniseries (or 12 hour movie, depending how you look at it). The title "Into the West" might make you think this is another movie about the US and its expansion westward, settling the wild west. You'd be very wrong. This movie focuses heavily on the experience of the people who were already there, and what the invasion meant to them and their culture. Spielberg has used his incredible talents to produce a powerful chronicle of an epic clash of civilizations, and the profoundness of what was lost. It's also a good movie to watch, with top notch acting and cinematography. I caught the last episode of this when it was on TV, and when I saw it available on DVD, I immediately bought it so I could see the whole thing. I'm very satisfied with my purchase!

ThePHNX Into The West A Stephen Spielberg Dreamworks ProductionAn Epic orgy of contemporary racism. All the bad guys wear white (skin) It seems the sage message is, nothing wrong with prejudice long as it's the WASP gets stung.Mysticism is restored to its pinnacle whence a new inquisition, this time the swarthy turn the screws. Doing dope and self mutilation is in, industry and technology are out, even the wheel takes a hit. All the while, Mr. Spielberg's Royce rolls merrily to the bank. We are served several scenes where reporters distort the truth to sell stories and then immersed in the most horrific Yankee version of the Lawrence Kansas raid. It seems the sage message is, nothing wrong with propaganda long as it serves the right (left) purposes. Edi Bernays YES, Joe Goebbels NO! Seems a bit slippery to me to glibly slide from extolling the virtues of one set rebels, the Lakota, to damning another, the Confederate. Suppose we need nip in the bud the growing awareness the South was not all wrong and it was not really about slavery: Lincoln back to sainthood, Quantrelle to hell (here on earth). So how do we rate this thing? Rank it rank? Not really, for there is much skill and talent evident, although the actors seem encouraged to smugness, especially the ti-pi dwellers - one suspects their new house in Malibu has sliding glass doors and plumbing - the costumes and sets are near perfect, the cinematography magnificent, the sound superb, and, yes, there is much excitement and entertainment. So we can't go too far south of five on a scale of one to ten. On the other hand, would be monumental hypocrisy praise Stephen Spielberg whilst Leni Riefenstahl is condemned. And as with "Olympia" there are some truths found "Into The West" (not as many, but some). Namely, you invade peoples land, drive them from their homes, destroy their way of life, expect them to get hostile. Would that Mr. Spielberg, a major supporter of Israel, took his philosophy 'Into The East'. A four out of ten, a "C" movie: ****------ / **---