September Dawn
In 1857 Capt. Alexander Fancher leads a wagon train of settlers across Utah to California. A confrontation with a congregation of Mormons soon leads to deadly consequences for all involved.
15 February 1998, Calgary, Alberta, Canada
1 June 1984, Santa Barbara, California, USA
15 January 1979, Akron, Ohio, USA
17 June 1957, Glendale, California, USA
15 July 1961, London, Ontario, Canada
22 July 1938, Stepney, London, England, UK
21 June 1973, Los Angeles, California, USA
29 December 1938, Yonkers, New York, USA
September 05, 2007
Contriving a faux Romeo and Juliet romance as a point of entry for the audience shows how unimaginative the filmmakers are, and how blandly and uninvolving it plays shows how fairly clueless they are in going about their game plan.
August 30, 2007
The workmanlike craftsmanship of Cain's filmmaking almost (but never quite) smooths over the ham-fisted way he conceives the story.
August 24, 2007
The maudlin, grotesque western September Dawn apes Schindler's List in hopes of creatinga Christian Holocaust picture.
August 31, 2007
Muddled, sloppy, and obfuscating.
November 08, 2007
Predictable, obvious, often silly.
December 03, 2007
The villainous turns by Jon Voight (as a hard-hearted Mormon bishop) and Terence Stamp (as a bloodthirsty Brigham Young) would have been more fun if they weren't part of such a clumsy campaign to lay this tragedy at the church's doorstep.
August 29, 2007
A plodding and highly questionable history lesson.
October 16, 2007
Drama may benefit from attention to history, but history doesn't always make for good drama.
August 30, 2007
An already thin veneer of historical truth wears off fairly quickly in this surprisingly dull and melodramatic low-budget western.
August 24, 2007
Religious and thematic issues aside, September Dawn is well-crafted as a revisionist Western with a message.
August 30, 2007
For all the guns fired in the film, [director] Cain aims the largest one at his foot-and pulls the trigger again and again.
August 27, 2007
With its complete lack of empathy for early Mormons and simplistic rendering of historical figures, September Dawn is that rare movie that actually deserves whatever condemnation might come from religious groups.
