kmechem Even some of the reviews that criticize the distortion of history seem not to know just how wrong, how upside-down the events in this movie are. As one who spent over a year researching John Brown, I can tell you that this film is based on prejudice and long discredited sources. There have been many excellent biographies of Brown in the last couple of decades that are objective, fair and open-minded. If you are interested in the truth of the events so mangled in "Santa Fe Trail," here are two books you could read: "To Purge This Land with Blood" by Stephen B. Oates (1971), and "Patriotic Treason" by Evan Carton (2006). This movie portrays Brown as an evil fraud who is really an enemy of slaves. In reality, Brown remains the greatest white hero to African-Americans. Some pseudo-historians have called him the first terrorist. Terrorists kill innocent civilians massively and randomly. The five men executed by Brown's followers at Pottawatomie were carefully selected. They were participants in the pro-slavery terror in Kansas which had already resulted in the murder of six free-state men and in the sacking of Lawrence; they had declared war on the Browns and other abolitionists. The killing at Pottawatomie was a terrible deed, but a just reprisal in Brown's biblical view. And from a historical perspective, we may ask whether Americans have not always supported fighting back against terror and oppression. It always amazes me to hear John Brown's raid at Harpers Ferry denounced by the same Americans who glorify the colonial farmers who killed British soldiers on their way back from Concord. As if "taxation without representation" was in any way commensurate with slavery, "one hour of which," in Jefferson's words, "is fraught with more misery than ages of that which (the colonials) rose in rebellion to oppose."Of course I realize that for some people, standing up for the truth is just being PC. But they won't have been able to read this far anyway.

inspectors71 There are about 309 million folks in this country. Almost none of them have ever seen Michael Curtiz' Santa Fe Trail. Who says God isn't on our side? This is such a nauseating and idiotic fiction of the US Army's pursuit of abolitionist John Brown, that the handful of survivors who have sat through it must feel that they have been tested by a higher power for some great task.I kept hoping that Ronald Reagan was whispering under his breath, "I'm here to pay my dues, nothing more, Lord!" What was most disturbing is the shamelessness of slave-supporters being the good guys, and the abolitionists being painted as lunatics.I'd read through the other reviews for a synopsis; I just wanted to point out that Santa Fe Trail must be on Hell's version of Netflix.

oldblackandwhite Santa Fe Trail, an epic western from Warner Brothers' golden era, is high-powered, fast paced, action-packed entertainment. Not the standard western story line or time setting, it takes place in the years immediately preceding the War Between the States. The action is not the usual cavalry versus Inidians or law versus outlaws, but the Army fighting against John Brown's depredations in "bleeding Kansas". This first class "A" production put first-rate director Micheal Curtiz in charge of a cast topped by Errol Flynn, Ronald Regan, Olivia De Havilland, Raymond Massey (as John Brown), and Van Hefflin in a villainous role, along with Warner's terrific stable of supporting players, and hundreds of extras. Flynn is at his best here as gallant Army officer Jeb Stuart, and the trim Mexican War era uniform compliments his dashing image. Massey is overpowering and absolutely riveting as half-mad, fanatical abolitionist leader Brown. Miss De Havilland doesn't have one of her better parts as the love interest of both Flynn and Regan, but she makes the best of it and comes off both fetching and engaging. Regan is solid and likable in a second banana role. Flynn's two favorite sidekicks (and real-life drinking buddies), those crude but lovable buffoons Alan Hale and Guinn "Big Boy" Williams lead the supporting cast, which also includes Moroni Olsen (as Robert E. Lee), Henry O'Neill, and the ever-reliable John Litel. Acting is first rate from top to bottom.Santa Fe Trail is almost non-stop action from beginning to end, all of it well staged, well filmed, and driven along by a rousing Max Steiner score. This movie has so much kinetic energy, it reminded me of a silent picture at times. The night gunfight in and around the burning barn at Palmyra, which eventually turns into a full-scale pitched battle between the cavalry and the Brownites, is one of the most spectacular and exciting action sequences ever staged in a movie. Yet the script by Robert Buckner is intelligent with sharp and engaging dialog. The final battle with Brown's forces at the Harpers Ferry Arsenal is staged on an epic scale. In both this scene and the one at Palmyra it seems more like a war movie than a western.Santa Fe Trail is top-notch entertainment in every way. Unfortunately the picture has come under a barrage of unfair criticism from two of the most irritating creatures who lurk about IMDb -- the self-appointed history professor and the politically correct gestapo enforcer. The professors of course are right in saying the movie plays fast and loose with history. But who cares! This is a work of fiction, **based** on actual events but not bound to portray them with circumspect accuracy. When the facts get in the way of the story, the story comes first. Only the most naive and uneducated expect a movie to give accurate history. You have to go to one of those old artifacts of the pre-electronic age, a book, to get the facts. Santa Fe Trail does, however, give an excellent impressionistic view of the events and attitudes leading up to the Civil War. It should set off a looking-up binge for the curious. I recall when first seeing the picture about fifty years ago, I did a lot of looking up. I didn't expect to find Jeb Stuart and Custer in the same West Point class. I already knew enough to know that Custer was much younger. But I was pleasantly surprised to find Robert E. Lee and Jeb Stuart were in fact at the siege at Harpers Ferry. By the way some of the professors erred in complaining that lever action rifles were used -- meaning repeating rifles, which would be incorrect for the time period. The rifles used in Santa Fe Trail were Sharps single shot breech loaders, which employed an under lever to open and close the breech for reloading -- in wide use during the 1850's. Not everything was inaccurate!The politically correct thought-control police have labeled Santa Fe Trail "racist" simply because it tries to show both sides of the issue and because it portrays Brown as an unbalanced murderer, which no serious history denies, rather than the hero they horrifyingly think he was. They have been joined by the rabidly Southerner-hating Yankees who come out of the woodwork to comment on any Civil War era movie. In fact this movie takes no side. The movie studios of the Golden Era had no agenda, except entertaining people and making stacks of money doing it, which Santa Fe Trail delivered on both accounts. It wasn't taking the Southern side to have Jeb Stuart say the South would eventually take care of the slavery problem itself. That was a common Southern attitude. Because he said it doesn't mean it was true or the movie makers approved it. And on and on. What Santa Fe Trail failed to show about the era leading up the the War Between the States was the real cause of the war. It wasn't slavery, or saving the Union, or state's rights or Southern independence. Those were just excuses for fighting. The War happened because the people of the North and the people of the South hated each other's guts. Did then, did from the very beginning of the Republic, and still do! No, the movie Santa Fe Trail didn't show that, but the IMDb reviews and message board posts demonstrate it all too well.

kellyadmirer This is an odd film for several reasons. First, the title has nothing to do with the story. Second, the politics are extremely murky, to the point of being deliberately obscure but still unmistakable and, to the modern eye, eyebrow-raising. Third, it features a strange meeting between two future US Presidents. It is perhaps the weirdest Western Hollywood ever made, but, unlike, say, 1970s Westerns that strove mightily to be revisionist and different, this one is unintentionally strange.Errol Flynn stars as JEB Stuart, part of a cadre of West Point graduates who (supposedly) were great friends but who later formed the military leaders of both sides of the Civil War. They politely spar over women, but not so politely against a messianic wild-eyed fanatic who is determined to upset everybody's comfortable life because of his obsession. That madman is one John Brown, who ultimately takes his fight from the wilds of Kansas to the neighborhood of Washington, D.C. The story ultimately devolves into a quite accurate depiction of the John Brown raid on Harper's Ferry and its resolution (Brown's hanging).Anyway, the only reason this film is titled "Santa Fe Trail" is because some of the events in the film take place near that trail's beginning. But that's not the oddest thing about it, not by far. This film takes the extremely politically incorrect position of making abolitionist Brown into the Osama bin Laden of his day and a group of (later Confederate) officers who captured him (Robert E. Lee, JEB Stuart) into the heroes. It doesn't come straight out in the open and say that the Civil War was a bad thing, but it comes darn close. One of the odder scenes is when a former slave tells Stuart, "If this is freedom, I don't want it." Now, try putting THAT into a modern film. Well, you could try, I suppose....The strange sympathy shown for the South and its leaders and its cause isn't the end of the oddities, though. There is a bizarre scene where future General Custer, played by Ronald Reagan (one of Flynn's signature roles was Custer in "They Died with their Boots On," adding to the confusion), dances with a pretty young lady and then is taken to meet her dad - future President Abraham Lincoln! They have a polite exchange, then Ron goes off to fight the evil guy who wants to free the slaves. So one actor playing a future President (this is set two years before Lincoln took office) has a strange and completely unnecessary scene with another actor who actually became President (forty years after this film was made). And the actor who played the strangely shaven Lincoln is completely uncredited anywhere, along with the daughter. Of course, Lincoln didn't even HAVE a daughter! It's all a bit odd and makes my head hurt. One of those strange moments in film history that nobody even noticed but is full of resonance now.Strange politics aside and oddities forgotten for the moment, this is a rousing war drama about some crucial events that otherwise are completely overlooked by Hollywood, probably because of the weird politics involved. The good guys later became the bad guys, and then revered figures in the history books, while the bad guy's cause was completely redeemed by history, so was he really a bad guy at all? Raymond Massey completely steals the film as Brown, playing the character as a complete and utter fanatic with delusions of Godhood and the air of a latter-day Moses freeing the slaves. One of the most mesmerizing performances I've ever seen. It just happens also to be completely confusing as any kind of political statement or interpretation of the man himself and what he stood for.So, OK, it's impossible to put the weirdness aside if you know the history at all. But well worth catching in any event.