The Mountie (2011)

Strong and Moving!

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

Blistering performances.

Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

I suppose this movie was made for television. And even for television it is not good enough. It starts okay but the further you get into the story the clearly it becomes that this is a mediocre movie. The last half hour is even disastrous to me. The script is not good at all, the actors are mediocre, their lines are so cheesy you wonder who comes up with something like that. The only good thing about this movie is some nature landscape shots. For the rest I would avoid this as the pest. The good reviews it gets on here are clearly written by people that had something to do with the movie. And those reviewers will fool you. They prefer lying then telling you they failed. Don't waste your time with this one.

It's not often that I praise Canadian film, particularly when it's funded by the usual scoundrels Astral and the like... yet this has actually been a good year, and I'm having to rethink.This is a good film, and certainly deserves more than the absurd 4.8 it currently gets on IMDb.Let's get the bad out of the way:The childish sing-song poetry narration was annoying. It seems there entirely to pretend that this is a movie for Canada's schoolkids. I guess if this shows up in schools, we'll know if it worked.And whoever decided the fonts to use for "The End" and for the opening and closing credits (except the scrolling ones) knows nothing about fonts and should be kept as far away from a keyboard as possible.And what magical property does fire have, that it knows it should only burn the poppy field, and then stop? It's not clear why Wade had to shoot his horse. Presumably, the horse was wounded, but I don't recall ever seeing that happen.Finally, it should have been made clear why gold made the river smell, and why people were falling ill. Was it sulphur? That's a lot of nitpicking. But aside from that, the truth is that this is a good western, comparable to 60s spaghetti westerns. What makes it unique is that it's in a Canadian context (Yukon Territory), and of course it's filmed with current techniques which allow for a bit more (but not too much) gore.It's a quiet film, which draws you into the story, characters, and landscape. I never once doubted Andrew Walker's portrayal of Wade. The cinematography is great. And the short running time (less than 90 minutes) is perfect for the story they're telling.I look forward to more like this, but with a bit more fine tuning.

To the American reviewer who thought it was a poor western movie, I would agree, it was a poor American Western movie, however, this is NOT the United States.Firstly, let's get a few facts straight. There was no Chinese opium den IN that settlement that the Mountie showed up at in the beginning. That was a flashback to what got him a year in the stockade. He got drugged up, picked up his gun when the little girl came to tell him about what was going on and shot up a bunch of Chinese bad guys. A year and a bit later, the Northwest Mounted Police dispatch his butt up to the Yukon territories (Part of Canada) to survey the best location for a new police outpost. (They called it a fort to placate the States)**********************SPOILERS************************ The Mountie managed to figure the whole thing out because he was concerned the people were getting sick. It was a hotbed of crime going on in that small settlement with former miner turned priest to cover all the bad stuff he was doing, running the place.Then you had a bunch of guys that were trying to take over, hence the need to grow opium to keep them away from what was REALLY going on.Oh, incidentally, MANY people from Russia, the Ukraine and Latvia settled in Canada and to be blunt, many would prefer the Yukon territories simply because it was a land closer to where they came from. So, not that big a stretch to have Russians and Latvians up there.Our main character doing a bad Clint Eastwood and the flashback bit about the Chinese being a little too confusing made me take away points from this movie but all in all, a very WELL DONE movie that is more than worth your time to watch. ENJOY!

This fine movie recounts what it must have been like when the new Canadian nation was "taming" its outback. It is a classic western tale in that sense, but the movie tells an interesting and unique story without being sentimental in the mode of so many other westerns. What is most striking is how the surroundings of the river and the Yukon setting becomes just as much of a character in the film as the humans --mostly represented by a small band of Latvian settlers whose shantytown construction is at odds, visually, with the surroundings, and who have struggled rather unsuccessfully against the elements. The hero, a Canadian Mountie, arrives just in time to come to their aid as it looks grim for the settlers' survival. Interestingly, the Mountie is depicted as a human representation of the setting and is carefully integrated into the landscape and respects it. Contrast this with the settlers, whose exploitation of the Yukon's natural resources for profit becomes the movie's moral pivot point and the plot's turns and twist proceed from there. The film is excellent social commentary on how civilization or Progress must integrate with the land -- in this case, the rugged mountain "character" -- or face extinction.The themes of loyalty and betrayal figure into the mix, as well, giving the filmmakers ample room to explore the humanity of those caught up in survival in such a beautiful but stark and violent panorama.