I really hate to say this, but I was disappointed by this movie. It was very well acted and the cinematography was excellent. The location filming (one of the few recent westerns filmed in the US) was great. Even the basic plot line was interesting. I liked the costumes, props and firearms (although I'm not entirely certain that a US Army officer in the 1890s would be carrying a Winchester 1873 carbine or that one of his troopers would be carrying a Spencer carbine at that late date).
I don't want to go into details for fear of giving away the story for those who haven't seen it, but here are a couple of problems that I had. I felt that the considerable violence was not entirely realistic. The details of the violence seemed realistic, but the characters all seemed to have a death wish. Most people, then and now, are a little cautious when it comes to entering into a situation where they might be killed. Most of the people in this movie had no such caution. When faced with a situation where starting a shootout is certainly going to lead to a heavy toll on their own side, I would expect to see people try to put themselves into a better tactical position or to avoid the gunfight entirely. In this movie, the characters just pull their guns and start shooting. It was realistic in that these events DO lead to a heavy toll on both sides, but I felt that the way it happened was unrealistic.
Another issue that I had with it had to do with the way the characters' attitudes change over the course of the film. I think that it was a major point of the story to have people who were "hostile" towards each other begin to respect each other, but they seemed to go from an extreme hate at the beginning to an extreme love at the end, which seemed highly unlikely over the course of maybe the month or so depicted in the movie. People with deeply ingrained hatred don't give that up easily. Many (most) stories and films like to show the way that characters change due to the events in the story, but I had trouble believing that one. Maybe changing from distrust/dislike to grudging respect might have been more believable for me.
Again, I'm trying to avoid giving away details, but those are the two main things that disappointed me about the movie. There was a lot to like about it and I have little doubt that I'll watch it again when it comes out on DVD, but I was really hoping for a great western and this wasn't it. Hopefully it does well in the box office to encourage more westerns in the future...
Oh--at the showing I attended, there were maybe 10 people in the theater and probably 6 of them talked through the movie and two different people had their cell phones ring, one apparently not hearing it because it rang for about a minute before it stopped. Have some courtesy, folks.
CC Griff