Into the West (2005)
Steven Spielberg executive produced this TNT miniseries about American Westward expansion during the 19th century. Told from both the perspective of the white Wheeler family and the Native American Lakota tribe, the 12-hour epic follows the clans as they struggle to find their place in a country confounded by turmoil and change.
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When I was a boy in northern England I watched many western movies, fascinated by cowboys and indians. In later life, I collected all of them on video, then replaced them with DVD and BluRay. After watching the historically accurate Spielberg produced Into the West, I sold them all. I came to the realization they were inaccurate there is only one truth about cowboys and indians and it can be found here in Into the West. Particularly shameful when the children were removed from their aboriginal families, and taken away to schools like Carlisle PA, to be punished for speaking their own language IMHO. Now no other "western" movie is in my collection, Into the West says it all Comment from Malcolm in Toronto, October 2014
This is 6 part min-series, 90 minutes each episode. This is a large scale production for a TV mini-series made by DreamWorks for TNT. It follows mainly 2 families in the 19th century as the wild west gets conquered.One family is the Wheelers. They are wheel makers. Some of the family set out to go west seeking fortune and adventure. The other is a Native American family struggling to fight, survive, and adapt to the invading white world.The production is big but sometimes just not big enough. The first lead Matthew Settle as Jacob Wheeler is just too weak of an actor. The native American actors were generally good. The ever changing characters do not allow for an easy even flow. This is especially true when different actors are used to portray the same character at different ages.The stories are compelling, but the disjointed nature of the stories do disrupt its flow. Overall they make for some good single movies, but not as much as a single storyline.
I expected a lot of this mini-series, because Steven Spielberg was the executive producer. And you notice that when you watch this series. The direction is very good! This series must have cost a lot of money, because it's excellently filmed. Very interesting is, that the series shows the situation in a different way. Not like in a traditional western, where the Americans are the hero's and the Indians are the stupid barbarians. Nicely done! Again a very good product by Steven Spielberg! But sometimes the English that is spoken, is difficult to understand, certainly when there are no subtitles. But nevertheless, very good mini-series!
A Man Called Horse with Richard Harris, Dances with Wolves with Kevin Costner, and now Into the West. Once again a white man chooses to befriend a Native Americans and decide to live with them. Was this common practice? Was there truly white guys out there that chose to write about the tribes? save the women from disaster? Perhaps someone should write a movie about Native Americans and how they were slaughtered and put in camps, tucked away with nobody to save them. Let's face it, the Native American women were sold, raped, tortured and killed, these films may be a comfort to those that can't face the truth, but some of us know better.Don't get me wrong, I liked the movie, but let's be aware that this would fall under the fiction category. The only men that thought like Wheeler are the ones created in Hollywood.