Review of The Way West

You know a movie's in trouble when the best thing you can say about it is the scenery's nice.Well,there's plenty of nice scenery in "The way West". Sadly the rest of it's pretty lousy.Kirk Douglas is so bad that if I was a Texas Tadlock I'd be thinking of suing.It's the sort of thing that gives ancestors a bad name.Robert Mitchum looks as though is is just waiting for the cheque to clear - he barely bothers to turn up in some of his scenes,and Richard Widmark shoulda gone easy on the Diazepam (T.M.) Lola Albright looks like she thought she'd signed on for a Disney picture. And poor little Sally Field,long before she realised that we do love her,plays a pioneers' daughter rather keen on a different sort of pioneering.What a mess it all is. Epic Westerns were dead by 1967 - hell,they were probably dead by 1957,but they just hadn't laid down.You could no longer stick a number of big name actors in a wagon train and let them do their thing.Unfortunately,no one had told Andrew V.McClaglen.He was competent enough given more structured material, viz - "Shenandoah",but "The Way West" just rambles on in a perfunctory manner while the audience slumbers. Let's tiptoe away and let them rest until Clint Eastwood comes along to wake them with a kiss.