Well-intentioned but not centered This is a beautiful movie in several respects, first with the homage to the best Westerns ever made, because it lavishes itself cinematographically on landscape as a primary character of the story, and secondly because it is driven as a morality tale, good vs. evil, with blurred lines becoming clarified and erased. And it must of course be said that Christian Bale's acting is superior and compelling. There are, unfortunately, flawed elements that ultimately lower this movie in both accurate portrayal but stretch the imagination to be sure, and thus it fails to meet the lofty heights touted by the TV advertising hype that it is the best Western since Unforgiven. In fact, both 3:10 to Yuma and Appaloosa both eclipse this film in gravitas. And here are some of the spoilers that drag the movie down from the loftier heights it's Director most certainly sought: The very opening sequence is unbelievable, as no man intent on protecting his family would wildly charge out of what could have been a barricaded position within his house to wildly run and shoot his rifle at a line of marauding Indians. :after in the film, women are abducted and apparently -- and here the film fails to make clear - raped by fur trappers -- without a mere peep no less scream heard from any of the women at the time of abduction, even though they had warning. More absurd is that when the good guys find where the abductors are camped, and holding the high ground train their rifles down upon the encampment, fail to simply fire upon and thus obliterate the bad guys when the bad guys emerge from their tents and start looking around because of a noise they heard. And finally, the movie is reduced to over-emotional, and so resultantly illogical sentimentality -- a sentimentality which we modern Americans most certainly have a sense of, but which hardened and violent Indians and U.S. Cavalry officers would not likely have experienced in 1892, and certainly the widow, unlike in this film, of an Indian massacre upon her family would not have developed a warm and fuzzy relationship with any Indians. It is, therefore, a wishful film and certainly may have greater appeal to a younger and more naive, based on removal from history in time, generation. And it is perhaps doubtful as well that any Native Americans over the age of 50 will be led to as cozy a relational feeling toward a former nemesis, meaning the U.S. Government, in the Government's war on them, the forced relocations and internments, as do the main characters of this film.