Best movie of this year hands down!

It's funny watching the elements come together in this complicated scam. On one hand, the set-up isn't quite as complex as it seems, but there's an easy sense of fun in every exchange.

It's an amazing and heartbreaking story.

Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

The Big Trees is directed by Felix Feist and adapted to screenplay by John Twist and James R. Webb from the novel written by Kenneth Earl. It stars Kirk Douglas, Eve Miller, Edgar Buchanan, Patrice Wymore and John Archer. Music is by Heinz Roemheld and cinematography by Bert Glennon.In 1900, the Congress of the United States passed a law which made a young man in Wisconsin decide to prove-that money grows on trees.Enter Kirk Douglas as unscrupulous lumber Barron Jim Fallon, who sets off to Northern California to make a fortune out of the giant trees that have grown there. But his two-faced tactics rub too many people up the wrong way and he is in danger of losing his heart to Alcia Chadwick (Miller).Bringing in the Sheaves.A remake of Warner Brothers' 1938 Valley of the Giants, The Big Trees is one of those films that looks good on the page but plays out as rather dull. When the trees are the best thing in your movie then you know you got problems! Cast are mostly fine, even Douglas gives it a good go, this in spite of it being a final studio assignment worked for free to get himself out of his Warner's contract. Narrative features worthy topics such as religious faith, care of the land and the evil of greed, and a couple of fine action sequences involving a train and a dam briefly lift the spirits. But the journey to these destinations is a very slow one, the script just isn't perky or intelligent enough to hold the attention, whilst the ending can be seen from way back in Wisconsin. We do get a nifty song and dance number, The Soubrette on the Police Gazette, performed by Wymore, that is enjoyable if oddly out of sync with tone of the movie. Prints of the film available haven't helped either, where the Technicolor looks washed out and not doing justice to Glennon's photography out of Orick, California.Tough to get through and instantly forgettable, avoid unless you happen to really dig trees. 3/10

Kirk Douglas offered a very good performances in a movie that I really didn't expect much out of, but that turned out to be surprisingly interesting. Neither the title nor the plot gave me high hopes. The story is about the efforts of a religious community to prevent the cutting down of California's giant redwoods by a Wisconsin lumberman. It doesn't sound particularly exciting, but actually turns out to be pretty good. Douglas is the lumberman - Jim Fallon - a charismatic conniver who seems able to convince anyone of his good intentions, even while he plots to take as much advantage of them as he possibly can. There's some decent enough action, particularly the scene in which Fallon tries to rescue Sister Chadwick (Eve Miller) from the out of control train. There's also good use of humour, provided both by Douglas and Edgar Buchanan as "Yukon" Burns, who becomes first Fallon's right hand man and then his antagonist - and who actually ends up being appointed as a marshall by a local judge (Roy Roberts) who's sympathetic to the religious folk and is willing to twist and turn every law on the book to help them.That evolution is one of the problems with the movie, however. People change too fast from good guys to bad guys, or from friends into enemies, and it's hard to really understand how the changes came upon them, which sometimes makes it hard to keep track of who's on whose side at any given time, and the final evolution of Fallon - telegraphed as it from the moment he arrives in California - is still hard to believe. I also thought that aside from Douglas and Buchanan, the performances were average at best. Still, it's not a bad watch. 6/10

Okay western tells the tale of Kirk Douglas as a would-be lumber baron with more charm than business savvy. Not as good as it could have been with a little sharper direction, but the dialog has some spark and Douglas shines like a new penny when he smiles.He gets adequate support from the usual suspects, with Patrice Wymore particularly good as his dance hall prostitute girlfriend. Eve Miller as the real love interest is a bit flat by comparison, even granted that she's stuck in the role of a holy roller trying to protect California's giant redwoods.The plot manages to get genuinely clever at times, with the local judge conspiring to help the Quakers foil Douglas's lumber scheme, Douglas scheming right back, and then the whole thing going topsy-turvy. Still, something is missing (and the faded print I saw didn't help) but the ending goes big to try to save it and nearly succeeds. Worth the time for fans of Douglas, but not a must-see title.

Kirk Douglas works with wood and wants to make money quick by grabbing land in California and cutting the giant and very old trees. He ends up getting involved with religious people who live there and only want him to cut the newer and smaller trees. Patrice Wymore is the woman who is in love with him but he starts falling for the religious Eve Miller. The unusual and interesting scenery makes this western worth seeing. Also Douglas here is at his best. It is a shame that the colors in the DVD, were very inferior to what I remember from the film when it was first released in 1952.