Rating of
3/4
One of the better Wayne movies I've seen lately
The M.O.W. - wrote on 05/14/10
A government agent (John Wayne) goes undercover as part of a traveling medicne show to stop a counterfeiting operation. For awhile, he believes the head of the show, "Doc Carter" (Earl Hodgins), is the head of the operation. His belief is backed up with the fact that "Carter" spent the last decade in jail.
Now, he has to go after the real criminals into Mexico and bring them to justice.
I have seen some John Wayne movies via Hulu in the last couple of weeks, and this is easily one of the better ones the site currently has.
The acting in this movie is very decent, and pretty believable all around. Not one performance was weak in fact. You had good chemistry between the main players, and none of them looked as if they were just there to get paid.
Wayne stands out as the leading man in this film. His presence is one of the strongest in the film. This was his last movie for Monogram Pictures, and it's a very good send-off for "The Duke." As for other performers, they all did pretty good performances for the amount of screen time they had.
Some of the supporting cast were poorly written in this movie. There are two members of the traveling medicine show who basically were there to perform a couple of songs, and deliver a few lines. They were there mostly for show, and not much else.
There is quite a few action scenes in this movie, but nothing too spectacular. You get one horse chase, and some gunfighting, but nothing memorable.
One thing that limits this movie is the length of it. This makes some subplots rushed. There is a taste of a romance between Wayne and Marion Burns, who plays "Carter's" daughter and performer in the medicine show. It didn't have time to blossom because the main plot had to be advanced.
When the story moves over the border into Mexico, I felt the characters introduced at that point were not used well. They added little, if anything, to the plot.
One big problem was the audio. Due to the movie being 75 years old, the audio just didn't hold up. The audio makes it hard to understand what is being said at times. At some points, the people were pretty muffled for a few seconds. You could understand what was being said, but you had to strain to hear what they were saying.
I would say that this could be something to watch if you can catch it online on sites like Hulu, or on television. Only rent the movie if you are a diehard John Wayne fan.
