oldblackandwhite Dakota is one of Republic Pictures' sturdy 1940's Westerns that still hold up well today. Republic was not a "poverty row" studio, as often erroneously stated, but it did know how to operate on the cheap while turning out a slick looking product. Most of the studio's output were programmers, but a few bigger budget "quality" pictures were produced every year. Dakota was one of these for year 1945. It has the scope and scale befitting the super star John Wayne wasn't yet but someday would be. The action starts with a madcap chase in Chicago, chugs across the prairie on a train, then churns upriver to Fargo Dakota on a rickety paddle wheel steamboat captained by Walter Brennan at his most eccentrically colorful. There is a large cast of extras along with a fine cast of principal and supporting players, including along with Wayne and Brennan, Ward Bond, Mike Mazurki, Ona Munson, Hugo Haas, Grant Withers, Paul Fix, and last, but not least the Republic studio boss's main squeeze, the beautiful but allegedly untalented Vera Ralston. More about her later. Thanks to the taut direction of Joseph Kane and skilled, fluid editing, Dakota has a pleasingly fast pace with a jaunty, almost light-hearted air. There is not a wasted camera shot in this movie. It provides almost non-stop action from beginning to end, though it does so without an excess of violence. We get coach chases, buckboard chases, foot chases, horseback chases, a fight in a train car, a robbery on a riverboat, a riverboat wreck, burning wheat fields (looking suspiciously like file footage from The Westerner), a woman jumping off roofs, and a spectacular night-time finale shootout. As an added bonus, Munson leads a chorus of pretty dance hall girls in a charming period musical number. Dakota displays an authentic look and feel we wish we could find in more westerns from any period. The men wear suits and ties most of the time with their long-barreled six-shooters tucked into their waistbands under their coats. The women wear long, period dresses instead of butt-tight jeans. The men, even the bad guys are polite and helpful to women in keeping with Victorian sensibilities. The sets are well-turned out and convincing of the period. The story by Carl Foreman like the script by Lawrence Hazard is intelligent and engaging. Dakota is one of John Wayne's "intermediate period" westerns -- that is intermediate between Stagecoach and Red River. Stagecoach raised Wayne out of the doldrums of the grade-Z western programmer circuit he had been stuck in through most of the 1930's. He was an "A" star now, but not yet really the big star he would later become. Still a star of the second rank like George Brent or Dennis O'Keefe. Through most of the 1940's, he was still being second-billed in "A" pictures behind such male stars as Robert Montgomery (They Were Expendable) and Ray Milland (Reap the Wild Wind) and top female stars such as Caludette Colbert (Without Reservations) and Joan Crawford (Reunion in France). It would take a magisterial performance in that Western of all Westerns Red River, released three years after Dakota, to raise Duke Wayne to the status of super star. But he was already showing the signs of what was to come in Dakota, completely relaxed and confident, with all the movements and looks of the mature John Wayne. He would feel confident enough of his stardom in the late 'forties to refuse to do any more movies with Vera Ralston for fear her bad acting would give him a bad name.Critics then and now have gone on and on about how bad the pretty Ms Ralston's acting was, that she was only a star only because she was having a relationship with and eventually married the head of Republic Pictures Herbert J. Yates (39 years older than she!) But she didn't seem so bad in Dakota. She was lively and energetic to the point of athletic, as you would expect from a woman who came to public attention by her ice-skating ability. Not a Bette Davis by any means, but here adequate for a not undemanding part which shows her as not only devoted to her husband, but resourceful, clever and somewhat manipulative -- in a sweet, and gentle way. She did look slightly bewildered at times -- not surprising since the recent Czech émigré's English was so poor, she often had to phonetically memorize her lines without understanding the content. Not as bad as Bo Derrick, or many others. Whatever Vera lacked in dramatic panache, she made up for it by projecting a sweet, innocent -- not to mention sexy -- charm. Everyone has just jumped on an anti-Vera bandwagon because she was an easy target, being the boss's babe and all. John Wayne in spite of his later remarks, seems to have had good chemistry with her in Dakota. But after all, she was a real babe, and what man wouldn't throw a few sparks hugging up against that buxom but tight ice-skater's figure! Dakota in a rarity amongst Westerns in having the male and female leads start the movie just married, and happily so against the opposition of her volatile father (Haas). No drifter and saloon floozy here. The love interests are a substantial married couple, so all the distracting courting business has already happened, and we can get on with the riding and the shooting. And there was enough of both and much else in this minor epic to satisfy nearly any aficionado of the horse opera.Dakota is top-notch Western entertainment from Old Hollywood's Golden Era.

weezeralfalfa Many reviewers complain about Vera Ralston's acting in this film and others. I thought this failed ice skating queen did an OK job playing her role. She is supposed to be the elegant daughter of an immigrant father who struck it rich in railroads. This explains her foreign accent and the fact that she is unlike those sexy dance hall girls of Fargo. Wayne appears to have married her mainly for her wealthy connections, looks and good pedigree. She appears to have married him for his good looks and charismatic personality. She is determined to call the shots when it comes to deciding where they will live, both near the beginning and at the end of the film. When they run away from her disapproving father, Wayne tells her to buy tickets to CA, but she buys tickets to St. Paul, knowing that her father's railroad is planning to soon begin a line to Fargo. She hopes to buy land cheap from the farmers and sell it dear to her father's railroad. Unfortunately, Ward Bond and gang have the same idea. Bond assumed the railroad was soon coming to Fargo because he saw their surveyors. He also assumes that Wayne is a land buying agent for the railroad(until late in the film, when the real agent shows up). Bond hammers out a contract with most of the farmers that he gets their land if they can't repay the money he loans them to harvest and market their wheat. He plans to burn their wheat, a variation on a similar scene in "The Westerner", when cattlemen were trying to burn out the sod busters. Wayne threatens to pressure the railroad to via Grand Forks, instead of Fargo, unless Bond signs over his contract with the farmers to Wayne(and presumably the railroad) for a big discount compared to the amount Bond was planning to sell the contract to the railroad. Wayne plans to share his profit with the farmers, should the farmers be unable to repay their loans. Bond hopes to steal the contract back from a deceased Wayne, delete the part about Wayne being the new contract owner and then burn the wheat fields. See the film to find out how things turn out.Walter Brennan plays a goofy old riverboat captain who mostly talks to his boat or himself or shouts at his assistant, Nichodemis. He practically steals the show. Nick Stewart, as Nichodemis, plays his stock character:a sleepy, incredibly slow thinking "darkie". He was Lightin' in the Amos & Andy TV series.

Michael O'Keefe John Wayne plays a gambler that comes to the aid of wheat farmers being swindled by crooked land grabbers. This is a fast paced 82 minute Republic Pictures movie with an obvious low budget look. A pretty good shoot 'em up though. Other stars include Ward Bond, Walter Brennan and Nick Stewart. Was not impressed with Wayne's love interest Vera Ralston. Burning of the wheat fields is dramatic. And of course The Duke saves the day.

Karnak201 Why, oh why, must film makers make a movie so dark? Sometimes I think they must have gotten a great deal on filters, and felt that they had to use them all on this one film. Some of the shots in this one are so dark that one is hard pressed to tell the good guys from the bad guys.Darkness is sometimes used to hide poor (read: cheap) special effects in a "B" movie, and I guess that's to be expected; But there was no reason for Dakota (1945) to be under exposed. I couldn't tell if it was a good movie or not because I couldn't see half of it.