anchor-9 What? You know that something went wrong in marketing a movie if it has 3 titles on an internet search. The Mountie, the Lawman, Way of the West. Perhaps the first is the best.. but there goes any chance of a US audience. Maybe it would have been better to keep that title and market it with subtitles to a world audience. Comments from others indicate they were expecting an American Western which it is not. Some can't get the mix of cultures. Well, the film is set shortly after Alaska was acquired from Russia; and guess what- the land was sparsely populated. FYI Yukon almost 150 years on still has a total population under 40,000 in a land area approaching that of Texas.Awful poetry read by a child? Well, the words are those of Robert Service, the unofficial poet of historical Yukon. If I had expected a "Western" I would have been disappointed. But thankfully I had a review from The Toronto Globe and Mail appear thanks to Google which was intriguing. Google it under "The Mountie". Looking for an "operatic" theme movie more in the tradition of Quebec cinema. This is it.

rgcustomer It's not often that I praise Canadian film, particularly when it's funded by the usual scoundrels Astral and the like... yet this has actually been a good year, and I'm having to rethink.This is a good film, and certainly deserves more than the absurd 4.8 it currently gets on IMDb.Let's get the bad out of the way:The childish sing-song poetry narration was annoying. It seems there entirely to pretend that this is a movie for Canada's schoolkids. I guess if this shows up in schools, we'll know if it worked.And whoever decided the fonts to use for "The End" and for the opening and closing credits (except the scrolling ones) knows nothing about fonts and should be kept as far away from a keyboard as possible.And what magical property does fire have, that it knows it should only burn the poppy field, and then stop? It's not clear why Wade had to shoot his horse. Presumably, the horse was wounded, but I don't recall ever seeing that happen.Finally, it should have been made clear why gold made the river smell, and why people were falling ill. Was it sulphur? That's a lot of nitpicking. But aside from that, the truth is that this is a good western, comparable to 60s spaghetti westerns. What makes it unique is that it's in a Canadian context (Yukon Territory), and of course it's filmed with current techniques which allow for a bit more (but not too much) gore.It's a quiet film, which draws you into the story, characters, and landscape. I never once doubted Andrew Walker's portrayal of Wade. The cinematography is great. And the short running time (less than 90 minutes) is perfect for the story they're telling.I look forward to more like this, but with a bit more fine tuning.

imfinished The first thing you have to know is that the summary for this is not only poorly written, but also fairly inaccurate. It doesn't really matter, however, as the summary only vaguely sets up the fact that there's a Mountie (obvious) and he has to fight some bad guys (also obvious). So the fact that the summary still manages to be so inaccurate is kind of baffling. As for the movie: It's a pretty good looking film almost by default because of the beautiful barren landscape where it takes place. The tone here is melodrama all the way and its effect is intensified by the wooden performance of the lead. He delivers every line with the same tone and appears to be the proud owner of a single grim expression. The rest of the cast aspires to broad clichés, to match the stilted dialogue. None of them bother to generate any chemistry as the effort probably seemed pointless for a film made of such tired beats and scenes.There are many poor choices here. We've got villains who seem to think every act of violence they commit is worth a mean chuckle. A woman who is shot in the chest, so at the end you see she now has to walk with a crutch. A child doing several mind numbing recitals of Robert Service. Basically, this is an uninspired and unambitious film that doesn't even succeed at what it attempts. Quite disappointing.

jfrentzen-942-204211 This fine movie recounts what it must have been like when the new Canadian nation was "taming" its outback. It is a classic western tale in that sense, but the movie tells an interesting and unique story without being sentimental in the mode of so many other westerns. What is most striking is how the surroundings of the river and the Yukon setting becomes just as much of a character in the film as the humans --mostly represented by a small band of Latvian settlers whose shantytown construction is at odds, visually, with the surroundings, and who have struggled rather unsuccessfully against the elements. The hero, a Canadian Mountie, arrives just in time to come to their aid as it looks grim for the settlers' survival. Interestingly, the Mountie is depicted as a human representation of the setting and is carefully integrated into the landscape and respects it. Contrast this with the settlers, whose exploitation of the Yukon's natural resources for profit becomes the movie's moral pivot point and the plot's turns and twist proceed from there. The film is excellent social commentary on how civilization or Progress must integrate with the land -- in this case, the rugged mountain "character" -- or face extinction.The themes of loyalty and betrayal figure into the mix, as well, giving the filmmakers ample room to explore the humanity of those caught up in survival in such a beautiful but stark and violent panorama.