Walking Thunder

I really enjoyed the family movie "The Long Road Home" by prolific family filmmaker Craig Clyde, so I sat down to watch Clyde's "Walking Thunder" with some enthusiasm. Sad to say, this particular effort is pretty disappointing. Like TLRH, this movie didn't have much of a budget; there's little in the way of production values, unless you count the admittedly spectacular Utah scenery. But TLRH had things to make up for the low budget like a solid script and good acting. This particular script is lumbering and padded out. (And what's with the set-in-present bookends? They don't add anything to the story!) The acting by the almost totally amateur cast is pretty mediocre. The one star in the cast (if you don't count narrator Brian Keith), John Denver, seems bewildered by his surroundings. About the only positive things to say about this exercise are the pretty good musical score and a balanced view about how Native Americans were in the frontier west. But these things aren't enough to prevent kids as well as their parents from fidgeting in their seats while watching this.