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List Price: $44.98 | | Label: Republic Pictures
Salesrank: 149829
Released: November 23, 1999 |
| Our Price: $11.90 |
| Used Price: $11.59 |
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MPAA Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Media: DVD |
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Editorial Review:
Here's something you don't see every day. Then again, would you want to? Several years before the 1950s' Davy Crockett craze, John Wayne donned a coonskin cap to play a militiaman in early-19th-century Alabama. He and his fellow Kentuckians are just passing through--"marching 600 miles," as they merrily sing (and sing, and sing), because riverboat magnate John Howard has refused to haul them. Howard and all-purpose scoundrel Grant Withers are scheming to dispossess a community of French émigrés--veterans of Napoleon's Grand Army who've come seeking life, liberty, etc. in the New World. Howard's also out to marry Vera Ralston, the French general's daughter. Naturally, Wayne's just the lad to gum up both plans.
Wayne himself produced The Fighting Kentuckian, but far from repeating the success of his maiden effort, Angel and the Badman, this is one of the feeblest films in his long career. Writer-director George Waggner never gets a handle on what a pre-Western should look and move like. Consequently, the cast does a lot of standing around looking silly in period costume, waiting--mostly in vain--for the script to establish their connection to one another and something resembling a plot. There is a glossier look to the proceedings than most Republic pictures achieved, thanks to Lee Garmes's pearly cinematography, but this is scant consolation. So is the almost creepy presence of Oliver Hardy, sans Laurel, doing Ollie-shtick as Wayne's jolly sidekick. No, he doesn't say, "This is another fine mess you've got me into!" But he should. --Richard T. Jameson
The John Wayne Collection, Vol. 2 Reviews:
Amazing 
2009-11-21 - The movie was shipped on time. I have not watched it yet but i am sure its great.
Not one of the Duke's best efforts... 
2009-08-24 - This movie was better when I saw it as a little kid. The plot and characters are not interesting. The singing is a distraction. It is strange seeing Oliver in a western. I was waiting Hardy to show up. The quality of the DVD was questionable and not a good copy.
Classic drama of heroes and scoundrels 
2009-01-03 - Set in an America between The Revolution and The Civil War, the Fighting Kentuckian tells a story most likely unknown to most Europeans - the colonization of Alabama by French immigrants, many having served as generals and other officers in Napoleon's armies up to the defeat at Waterloo in 1815. John Wayne represents the foot soldier in The Militia as it slogs its way between insurgencies and "in-fighting". Taking to a French general's daughter at the outset of the film, Wayne's character questions the intriguing & thieving land-owners, the theft of another man's land, local power struggles and general dishonesty. At the end of course the good wins over bad, Wayne's character wins the girl and all live happily ever after. If you want entertainment a la Westerns',some French mystique and a feeling of the Classic movie starring Vivien Leigh & Clark Gable...then you have your Saturday night entertainment well in hand.
A Romantic "Eastern", not Western
2008-06-15 - John Wayne is well known for his westerns. The setting of this 1949 flick is Alabama, involving men who came from Kentucky. So this is technically an "eastern". The scenes are apt for the early 1800's: Soldiers are still using flintlocks, Alabama is about to be admitted to the Union as a state, and there is a large group of French citizens exiled after Napoleon's ignominious defeats.
John Breen (John Wayne) falls in love with a French woman. Trouble is, she is already earmarked for an arranged marriage to another man. A love triangle develops. Breen is determined to marry her. But he adds to the problems by pretending that he is a surveyor. He also finds out that there is a scheme afoot to defraud the French of some of their property by moving the posts that define the boundaries of the property.
This flick is more than a love story. It pushes the American way over the then-European way. The American way is progressive and the European way is traditional. In the American way, women marry whomever they love and whomever they choose to marry. In the then-European way, women married according to arranged marriages. These were usually based on social class, the wealth of the suitor, and the professional connections of the suitor with the father of the bride. The bride's wishes counted for little.
Mainly Nostalgia
2008-03-22 - I give this movie 3 stars mainly out of nostalgia. I doubt that contemporary veiwers will get much out of this unless they are cinamatography buffs that enjoy films from this era.
