The Sacketts (1979)
5/10
Enjoyable western for western fans
21 December 2006
Warning: Spoilers
The Sacketts was fun to watch if you like actors like Tom Selleck, Sam Elliot, Ben Johnson and Glenn Ford. Other than having a great cast, there's nothing ground-breaking here. In fact this film at times seems a little bit too casually made, as if they were just trying to throw it together, collect their paycheck, and move on to the next project.

There are a number of things that are distractingly bad in this film, and here are a few that I noticed.

1. When they are on the cattle drive, they send Tyrell ahead to scout out water for the horses. Tyrell says he doesn't know the country, but they send him anyway. Tyrell finally does find water. A minute later he's under gunfire from rustlers who want to stampede the herd. Two minutes after that, the owner of the herd himself shows up saying that he came when he heard gunshots. Was Tyrell only scouting a half mile ahead of the herd? 2. Glenn Ford's death scene was really awful. By the position he was laying in, it would have been more practical for his hand to fall against his chest and his eyes to just glaze over. Instead, he went for the dramatic effect of twitching his head to the side and closing his eyes while pulling his hand from Selleck's and tossing it to the ground.

3. The scene where Tell Sackett goes to cut the bad guys' horses loose. It was supposed to be the middle of the night, yet it was broad daylight outside. Oh, but they had the sound of whippoorwills dubbed in to fool us. Unfortunately the fact that it was not the slightest bit dark kind of tipped me off, unless they somehow made their camp fire strong enough to light up the whole valley.
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