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"Ham-fisted" and "venemous religious tract": Reviews for "September Dawn"
RottenTomatoes.com ^ | 08/23/07 | Various

Posted on 08/23/2007 5:45:11 PM PDT by Reaganesque

"This handsome indie Western damningly recounts the 1857 slayings of 120 settlers passing through Utah, but the didactic presentation, grim speechifying and tacked-on love story all signify a less-than-healthy regard for the audience's intelligence."
Click for Full Review  Variety   Justin Chang

1/4
1/4 "The film feels less like historical drama than a venomous religious tract printed on celluloid."
Click for Full Review  Minneapolis Star Tribune   Colin Covert

 

"September Dawn has the ham-fisted lyricism of political ads and pharmaceutical commercials."
Click for Full Review  Village Voice   J. Hoberman

 

"When the movie isn't doling out ham-fisted history...it gives us magnificent vistas of a pristine prairie...and there's a deep sweetness to the subplot of Jonathan and Emily falling in love."
Click for Full Review  Film Journal International   Frank Lovece

1.5/4
1.5/4 "When watching the screen depiction of a historic event in which 120 people were murdered, giggling is not the appropriate response."
Click for Full Review  Salt Lake Tribune   Sean Means


1/5 "It has the chilling certitude of the self-righteous."
Click for Full Review  Orlando Sentinel   Roger Moore

2.5/5
2.5/5 "The real problem is that September Dawn isn't a very good movie. It moves too much like a public-school history pageant and gives us mono-dimensional characters who speak dialogue that fairly reeks of printer's ink."
Click for Full Review  Arizona Republic   Richard Nilsen

1/5
1/5 "The jarring MTV-style filmmaking is so distracting and the 'messaging' so unsubtle that after two long hours you find yourself leaving the theater with a massive headache, wondering when you started to hate Mormons."
Click for Full Review  Orlando Weekly   Brett Register

1/4
1/4 "Forget Grindhouse. September Dawn is the year's first honest-to-goodness exploitation flick."
Click for Full Review  Slant Magazine   Nick Schager

1/4
1/4 "Bombastic, slow-drying dramatization with lead-weight dialogue and a turgid romantic subplot."
Click for Full Review  Newsday   Gene Seymour

D-
D- "Has serious problems in historical terms. But in this case they're exacerbated by the simple ineptitude of the filmmaking."
Click for Full Review  One Guy's Opinion   Frank Swietek

"Even if one gets past the movie's controversial depictions, there is the matter of its second-rate, made-for-television fare -- the poor battle choreography, the wooden editing and the cheesy writing."
Click for Full Review  Washington Post   Desson Thomson

2.5/4
2.5/4 "If September Dawn is a kind of Western, it's a Western utterly devoid of heroism or the usual archetypes. But the core message transcends time: Hatred laced with religious fanaticism is a toxic blend."
Click for Full Review  Milwaukee Journal Sentinel   Dave Tianen

1/4
1/4 "Doesn't even measure up to an episode of your typical, cowboy TV show from the Fifties like Roy Rogers or The Lone Ranger. Get my drift, Kimosabe?"
Click for Full Review  NewsBlaze   Kam Williams

Click here for links to the full reviews.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: dawn; fistsofhams; hamfisted; hamhamhamham; movie; moviereview; reviews; september; septemberdawn
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To: colorcountry
It is my opinion that LDS Scholars are not given free reign of thought by their Church. To publish opinions contrary to the “official” stance threatens expulsion from their community and family.

I think there has been a lot of improvement in this area since the days of the "September Six" and I believe we are entering an era of greater freedom for church historians. Intellectuals who want to publicly question doctrine are always going to have a tough time, especially if they work for the church.

241 posted on 08/24/2007 1:05:12 PM PDT by sandude
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To: Grig

It was my understanding that Joseph Smith wrote the Book of Mormon, that no manuscripts exist of the writings of Nephi. Is my understanding incorrect? Are there numerous manuscripts that confirm the Book of Mormon (like there are numerous ancient manuscripts that confirm the Bible), or only the Egyptian tablet that Joseph thought was ancient Hebrew?


242 posted on 08/24/2007 1:06:04 PM PDT by Theo (Global warming "scientists." Pro-evolution "scientists." They're both wrong.)
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To: colorcountry; sandude
Anyone can get access to the church archive.

Was he given free access to the archives?


There is a BIG difference between Access and free access.

Sandy Burglar had free access, and since Mark Hoffman such access to the church archives has been hard to come by for anyone not employed there.
243 posted on 08/24/2007 1:09:06 PM PDT by DelphiUser ("You can lead a man to knowledge, but you can't make him think")
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To: colorcountry
From BYU's homepage:

The Honor Code

Brigham Young University, Brigham Young University-Hawaii, Brigham Young University-Idaho, and LDS Business College exist to provide an education in an atmosphere consistent with the ideals and principles of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. That atmosphere is created and preserved through commitment to conduct that reflects those ideals and principles. Members of the faculty, administration, staff, and student body at BYU, BYU-H, BYU-I, and LDSBC are selected and retained from among individuals who voluntarily live the principles of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Observance of such is a specific condition of employment and admission. Those individuals who are not members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are also expected to maintain the same standards of conduct, except church attendance. All who represent BYU, BYU-H, BYU-I, and LDSBC are to maintain the highest standards of honor, integrity, morality, and consideration of others in personal behavior. By accepting appointment on the faculty, continuing in employment, or continuing class enrollment, individuals evidence their commitment to observe the Honor Code standards approved by the Board of Trustees “at all times and . . . in all places.” (Mosiah 18:9)

The scholars you reference signed a legally binding contract where these conditions were very clearly spelled out. They knowingly violated it. They were fired. They knew that such criticisms would get them fired but they went ahead anyway, bit the hand that fed them and then complained bitterly about the injustice of it all when BYU held them to their word.

244 posted on 08/24/2007 1:09:38 PM PDT by Reaganesque (Romney for President 2008)
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To: colorcountry
If your point is that many more perps should have paid with their lives for the crime, then you are absolutely right.

That was precisely my point. The perps have hidden behind the conviction and execution of Lee for far too long. It's time for the truth. You're a military man, right? Did you know Lee had two commanding officers on that field that day, and was following orders. Why was he the one who was scape-goated?

There is no doubt that Lee should have had ample company standing next to him when the firing squad fired their volley.

It should be pointed out, however, that the perps are no longer hiding as they are all dead. Whether all the perps other than Lee are being discreetly swept under the rug to this very day is another matter.

While I do believe in individual responsibility rather than collective guilt, trying to hide historical facts is the moral equivalent of being an accessory after the fact.

I have no religious or family connection with this historical event so I am trying to analyze it as a neutral third party without an ax to grind. For the moment, until I learn other information, I am inclined to view it as the moral responsibility of the Cedar City Mormon community and not the moral responsibility of the entire Mormon community of the time.

After the massacre, there was a belief on the non-Mormon side that it had been the work of Indians and it took a while for the investigative mechanism to get moving.

The remote location, local resistance to talk and the Civil War all resulted in delayed indictments.

Even when indicted, some perps escaped prosecution by flight.

The Government chose not to prosecute some cases for reasons unclear to me. Maybe the reason was that jury bias would preclude conviction in any but the most heinous cases.

Even after Lee's prosecutions began, the fact that the initial 1875 trial jury was composed of eight Mormons and four non-Mormons most certainly affected the outcome which was a hung jury.

In Lee's 1876 trial, the jury was all Mormon and yet, even that particular all-Mormon jury convicted Lee.

Why did Lee stand out as a man that even an all-Mormon jury thought needed killing in spite of their natural tendency to give a fellow Mormon the benefit of the doubt?

Maybe it was because of the especially heinous episode of the teenaged sisters Rachel and Ruth Dunlap and what Lee did to them in spite of pleadings for mercy by the Paiute chief.

A few victims who escaped the initial slaughter were quickly chased down and killed. Two teenaged girls, Rachel and Ruth Dunlap, managed to climb down an embankment to hide among oak trees for a time, but were spotted by a Paiute chief from Parowan, who took them to Lee. Lee ordered the girls killed despite pleadings for mercy by the chief and the girls. Captain Carleton[141] mentions that the sisters were later found naked with slit throats.

245 posted on 08/24/2007 1:14:52 PM PDT by Polybius
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To: Elsie
Yeah!

Defend them Catholics instead of picking on us!

--MormonDude


Just curious, do you ever have anything of substance to say?

Carry on then...
246 posted on 08/24/2007 1:22:57 PM PDT by DelphiUser ("You can lead a man to knowledge, but you can't make him think")
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To: Polybius

The people blamed the Indians because the Mormon church said it was the Indians.
The murderers were mostly Mormon. 50+. All 120 were killed within 10 minutes. One man can’t do that.

I think having the LDS church control the memorial site is like if a local mosque in NYC were in control of ground zero. The LDS church won’t even allow crosses on the site.


247 posted on 08/24/2007 1:26:52 PM PDT by JRochelle (“Never trust a man who makes toys in a land where children are forbidden.”)
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To: colorcountry
The September six were excommunicated. What does that have to do with BYU.

You might just as easily ask, what does the church have to do with BYU? (Hint, it's an ownership thing)

I have two BIL who teach at church owned universities, they know that if they don't keep the Church's rules, they lose their jobs, because THE CHURCH OWNS THE SCHOOL.

These guys on the September six had been in ivory towers too long, they needed to get out into the real world, so they took actions designed to accomplish that goal. Success!
248 posted on 08/24/2007 1:27:43 PM PDT by DelphiUser ("You can lead a man to knowledge, but you can't make him think")
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To: Sherman Logan; Auntie Dem

I don’t think that was the point, it was would you to not be suspicious, lets not assign things he did not say, Sherman Logan


249 posted on 08/24/2007 1:28:34 PM PDT by restornu (Teach them correct principals and let them govern themselves ~ Joseph Smith)
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To: Polybius

Interesting.


250 posted on 08/24/2007 1:31:15 PM PDT by colorcountry (Silence isn't always golden.....Sometimes it's just yellow!)
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To: colorcountry

as for me I would not give bias people access!

Why berate those for not being foolish!

let thet devil fine his own food!


251 posted on 08/24/2007 1:31:30 PM PDT by restornu (Teach them correct principals and let them govern themselves ~ Joseph Smith)
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To: DelphiUser

Hey, Delphi ~~ Whether or not you want to accept my personal family history is your choice. But stop lecturing me on getting a grip. I have a right on this forum to express myself.

So what were my great grandparents supposed to do, tell every one of their children (six of them, some teenagers)to keep it a secret to their graves? That just doesn’t make sense within a family!

And my clear memories of my grandmother telling me what happened to her and her family are to be discarded as a lie?

Elements within the Mormon hierarchy tried to kill my great grandfather three times because he refused to take a second wife.

I’m sorry if it has offended you, but, there I’ve said it again.


252 posted on 08/24/2007 1:33:04 PM PDT by rightazrain ("Once we have a war there is only one thing to do. It must be won. " -- Ernest Hemingway)
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To: saganite
It might be a hamfisted movie but the historical facts are not in doubt.

Have you seen the movie?

253 posted on 08/24/2007 1:33:37 PM PDT by MEGoody (Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.)
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To: Reaganesque; All
Here's the worst, Roger Ebert goes so far as to make Hitler, Stalin, and Pol Pot "secular gods" in order to make sure that killing only comes from believers, and to make this movie prove his point:

Were there fanatics among those who ran the Salem Witch Trials or the Inquisition or the Crusades? Or the Holocaust? No shortage of them. Organized religion has been used to justify most of the organized killing in our human history. It's an inescapable fact, especially if you consider the Nazis and communists as cults led by secular gods. When your god inspires you to murder someone who worships god in a different way or under another name, you're barking up the wrong god.

254 posted on 08/24/2007 1:48:38 PM PDT by hocndoc (http://www.lifeethics.org/www.lifeethics.org/index.html)
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To: Elsie
Ever heard of the Haun's Mill massacre, Elsie? No. And Hollywood will never make a movie about it either. Here's a little history for the bigots among you:

"The mob kept on firing at the shop until they thought all within were killed; then they went about the place killing all they could find alive, and robbing the houses of everything they could carry off. They even stripped the dead and dying of their clothes. They went into the blacksmith shop for this purpose, and there they saw dead men lying in piles, and wounded men groaning in pain, while pools of blood stood on the floor.

"A little ten year old boy named Sardius Smith had crawled under the bellows, trying to hide from the wicked mobbers; but one of them saw him and dragged him out. Then putting the muzzle of his gun to the boy's head he killed him instantly. Sardius' little brother, Alma, seven years old had a great hole shot in his hip; but he lay still, fearing that if he moved they would shoot him again. Another boy by the name of Charles Merrick was discovered. He pleaded with the mobbers not to kill him: "I am an American boy," he said "O! don't kill me!" The mobber heeded not, but blew out his brains.

"Thomas McBride, an old, gray-haired man who had fought in the Revolutionary War under Washington, gave up his gun to a mobber, and then pleaded for his life. The cruel mobber took the gun and shot the old man dead, and then another mobber cut him to pieces with an old corn cutter."

Thomas McBride was my great-great-great grandfather.

255 posted on 08/24/2007 2:51:47 PM PDT by JCEccles
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To: Theo
Moroni

Is that an italian "moron?"

Since you mentioned "a demon named Moroni," somebody has suggested his original assignment was "spirit of the air over Rome" and his job was to set up various religious headquarters on earth that would divert attention from the living Christians on earth being the true temple of God. (No wonder LDS temples have been built in direct contradistinction to the New Testament temple...and yet LDS purports to be a "restoration?")

256 posted on 08/24/2007 2:54:00 PM PDT by Colofornian
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To: colorcountry
The one-man wonder John D. Lee who was sixth in command at the Mountain Meadow Massacre, single-handedly shot 130 people in the head point-blank after disarming them. Glad they caught and executed the perp. Can you imagine if he had lived? He would have been the 19th century’s answer to Jack Bauer or Chuck Norris!!

What? You've haven't heard of the original "single bullet theory?"

257 posted on 08/24/2007 2:59:02 PM PDT by Colofornian
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To: JCEccles

Sounds pretty bad, if that cult or whatever group it is runs a candidate for president, I am going to vote against him.


258 posted on 08/24/2007 3:01:42 PM PDT by ansel12 (It is time we "take Out" the Jupiter)
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To: tracer
The Mountain Meadows Massacre was a tragedy...

OK, the word "tragedy" is best reserved for things like accidents with multiple victims or young victims (the Titanic was a "tragedy"); weather-related deaths like tornadoes. The very definition of "tragic" is linked to "disaster" and words like "sad" are assigned within the definition of "tragedy."

It's not that this description is totally off base, it just that it deliberately steers clear of the social justice indignation that such a massacre would otherwise vividly highlight, and implies that there were only "victims" and no "perpetrators"--at least none with malicious intent.

In the same way, abortion is not simply a tragedy, but stark murder; and a murder of conpsiracy at that. This, too, was a mass murder involving conspiracy.

259 posted on 08/24/2007 3:07:50 PM PDT by Colofornian
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To: JCEccles

You forgot the real tear jerker line....”Nits make lice.”

Never leave that line out, it kills your story.


260 posted on 08/24/2007 3:14:48 PM PDT by colorcountry (Silence isn't always golden.....Sometimes it's just yellow!)
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