Randolph Scott is a former Confederate soldier and Joan Bennett plays a woman who refuses to admit when the Civil War is over in James Hogan's cattle rustling epic, which looks and feels in retrospect a lot like a B version of Howard Hawks' "Red River." There's a general lack of ambition here and the movie doesn't add up to much, just a formula picture that pretends to be somewhat more important than a singing cowboy picture.<br /><br />Anytime Randolph Scott is wearing more makeup in the movie than Joan Bennett, that's a sign of trouble right there. Scott annoyed me to no end in this movie, and it's hard to believe he's the same man who became such a convincing western star in the 50s and 60s. The director is partly to blame, because he's always having Scott do these clownish double takes to the camera that really do not suit him. You shouldn't ask actors to do things that they really can't do. Joan Bennett is mis-cast because she feels too contemporary. Walter Brennan basically stole the movie and made a couple good scenes out of it. I wouldn't be surprised if Hawks did see the movie and figure he could do it better. The following year after this film, Brennan made a memorable appearance in Fritz Lang's "Fury," and shortly after that he began his memorable run of character performances for Hawks. So this film might if anything be somewhat important in terms of Brennan's filmography, since he basically proves here that he's even better than Gabby Hayes.<br /><br />May Robson is also very amusing as "Granna", the ancient frontier woman who won't be left behind and who nurses a maternal affection for the aging Brennan character. Robert Cummings plays the rival love interest for Joan Bennett, a smarmy Confederate dead ender who dreams of leading rebel excursions from Mexico to reclaim Texas. B western regular Raymond Hatton also puts in a patented supporting performance as some kind of wilderness man to round up the rather generic but pleasant nature of the cast and film generally.<br /><br />Not much else to say here. Hogan's direction is pedestrian and the story is somewhat interesting but very contrived. For instance, when the uber-annoying regional bureaucrat (Robert Barrat) is murdered rather obviously in the midst of a fray by Scott's trapping buddy (Hatton), the military officer in charge (Harvey Stephens) barely bothers to investigate and suddenly switches plans and agrees to help the ranchers. It's all tied up in such a way as to soothe the frayed nerves between the Southerners and the Northerners, as if this was some piece of propaganda delayed by some 60 odd years. There's a couple shoot-outs against Indians but nothing really invested with any drama or meaning. Violence in this movie is simply action, and not very good action. Basically the movie would suffice for Saturday morning but it seems to want to be at least a bit more than that, and fails.