Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

Good movie but grossly overrated

Fanciful, disturbing, and wildly original, it announces the arrival of a fresh, bold voice in American cinema.

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

. . . he wins a major rodeo decathlon during THE MAN FROM UTAH (setting several world records for individual events in the process). This will put any Human Citizen of the 21st Century in mind of our most famous living Olympic Gold Medalist Decathlon Champ, the athlete-formerly-known-as Bruce Jenner. Life Cereal's ad campaign in the 1900s used to encourage kids to "Be like Mike," but Bruce grew up with the heartbreak of failing to "Be like John Wayne," no matter how hard he tried. Maybe that's because even John Wayne washed out at "Being like John." Take the first scene of THE MAN FROM UTAH. Wayne finds himself staring into an empty purse, the Universally understood symbol for a Lady losing her grip on Womanhood. If there's anyone who attacked gay people more viciously than Today's gay nightclub frequenter, Orlando Omar, it was John Wayne. Famed 20th Century film director Vincent Sherman has testified on camera that he used to watch John Wayne and his henchman Ward Bond riding motorcycles up and down the street in Real Life, clubbing the Gay and Transgender Population, as if they were baby seals at the mercy of Canadians. (Such behavior in the 1950s was no riskier for the Perpetrator than a slave overseer flogging Southern Blacks in the 1850s.) No doubt both Wayne and Bond were frustrated women trying to escape their Bruce Jenner-style bodies before Today's surgical options had been perfected, but that's not enough to make me excuse their dastardly deeds.

Oh, brother, this one starts out with John Wayne riding his horse and singing like he's high on wacky tobacky. His singing voice is dubbed but that just makes it more embarrassing, I think. Anyway, this singing cowboy rides into town just as the bank is being robbed. He helps marshal Gabby Hayes stop the robbers and is immediately recruited to do some undercover work with a gang that's fixing rodeos...or something like that.Polly Ann Young plays the female lead and she wears 1930s clothes even though this is supposed to take place in the Old West. There are also telephone poles throughout the entire movie that they don't even try to shoot around. They use stock footage during the rodeo scenes that clearly have people in 1930s attire in the audience. Historical accuracy was not a concern to the good people at Lone Star. This is one of many B westerns Wayne made in the '30s before he hit it big. The vast majority of these were forgettable but watchable oaters with little or nothing to recommend about them. A select few were better than average and many others were worse than average. This one's kind of crappy but if you have a good sense of humor and like to poke fun at bad movies, you might like it. Beware modern copies that have a terrible electronic score that often just starts at random spots in the movie.

This is pretty dire. Just as Italian opera always kicks off with the tenor blasting out an aria, this horse opera has Big John (in thickly caked make-up) miming pitifully to a recorded voice as he strums a guitar in the saddle. From that wobbly start, the film never really improves.Wayne's character is named John Weston ("western" - get it?) and when he rides into town, he gets involved in the least-convincing shootout you ever saw. Once the basic plot has been established (and believe me, it's basic) what follows is wooden acting and lumbering plot exposition. The film is downright amateurish. When the Duke takes a river trip, instead of cutting from Big John in canoe to the land-based action, the editor gives us the whole laborious process of Wayne disembarking, then clambering up through the undergrowth. The insert of the guy riding shotgun on the stagecoach is oh-so-obviously NOT on the stagecoach. And speaking of "Stagecoach", it is remarkable to note the change in Wayne in five short years. Under Ford's tutelage he grew into a star, and commands the screen in the later film with effortless authority. Here, he is a green amateur.If anything, the movie goes downhill after Weston sets off on his mission. The rodeo is merely an excuse to fill a third of the reel time with archive footage. The opening cavalcade is interminable, and we get the same stock shot of the crowd over and over again. Needless to say, Weston decides to have a go at this cow-wrasslin', and just happens to smash the calf-roping world record. Dolores the fallen woman (Anita Campillo) makes a play for Weston (there always has to be a Fallen Woman in this kind of film - often a latina, too). How come she's Mexican, when her brother isn't? Our hero snubs the judge's daughter, Marjorie (played by Polly Ann Young) in order to make off with Dolores: it is a scene of the ugliest crudity, and woefully underwritten, with Big John wordlessly walking away from the Nice Girl.When director Robert N. Bradbury tries for novel effects, he comes a cropper. The punch-up in a blacked-out room may have seemed like a good idea when the movie was being planned in some Pasadena gin joint, but it fails miserably on the screen. It lasts too long and is too irritating for the viewer. In a medium which relies almost exclusively on visuals, black-out is rarely a smart move. And how did Big John get his white hat on in the dark? Composed of tedious medium two-shots, eschewing close-up altogether, the picture lacks cutting rhythm. If Weston and the Marshall are trying so hard not to reveal their alliance, why are they sharing a hotel room? Why does the gang suddenly decide to snub Dolores? Why did Gabby Hayes get the part of the old-timer? Wasn't Walter Brennan in town? Why is the incidental music so strange? How does Big John know that the bad guys are hiding a needle in the saddle, dipped in snake venom? What kind of idiots would try to commit a series of murders by hiding needles dipped in snake venom in cowboys' saddles? Enough already.

At the start of this Lone Star cheapie, the Duke strays into Roy Rogers territory as he warbles in a worryingly light voice while trotting along on his trusty steed - and one can only speculate on how foolish he must have felt. Thankfully, our hero quickly becomes too involved with a crooked rodeo gang to 'entertain' us with any more serenades as he 'bulldogs' and 'Roman Rides' and does all the other things an honest cowboy has to do to get in with a gang of crooks.Subsequent fame has given us a kinder opinion of Wayne than he probably deserves in terms of his potential in these early days. Ford saw something there, but nobody else in Hollywood did, and Wayne spent most of the 30s trudging from one no-budget potboiler to another. He's better than most of the cast in this flick, but there's little to indicate the massive star power he would one day possess - it's only his size that seems to give him a presence (and that, if truth be told, is what Wayne was - a screen presence rather than an accomplished actor).All these flicks were padded out with interminable shots of cowboys riding very fast on their horses, and this one's no different. But in this one we're also treated to lengthy scenes of rodeo riders - which are actually more interesting than the horse-riding fillers, even though the numerous shots of men twisting steers' necks to near-impossible angles in order to floor them and prove their macho status are not pleasant to watch. And the Indians - who were rarely a feature in the Lone Star flicks - are relegated to the status of rodeo sideshow acts here.THE MAN FROM UTAH is by no means the worst of the Lone Stars pics (of the ones I've seen, that particular wooden spoon is reserved for RANDY RIDES ALONE) although the superhuman status given to Wayne's character is a bit over the top. Probably the best from this era is THE LUCKY TEXAN, so if, for some bizarre reason, you're in a position to choose between the two, be sure to plump for the Texan.