My grandpa asked me to find him this movie because he watched it in his childhood. I dug it out and we watched it together. "Distant Drums" has a beautiful setting, being shot in Florida and some of the nature shown in the movie is gorgeous! Upon reading about the movie on the Internet, I also found out Wilhelm scream originates from this movie, which is a nice thing to know if you are a cinema fan. A character that goes by the name of Monk is an interesting one and stands out from the rest of mostly bland and uninteresting characters. Everything rest about this movie is mediocre at best. Capt. Quincy Wyatt, played by Garry Cooper, is your typical Hollywood macho man of the time, that is a born leader and unmatched fighter and every man can only dream to be like him. Mari Aldon isn't any better and plays equally stereotypical damsel in distress who predictably falls victim to Wyatt's charm by the end of the movie. Even setting the historical inaccuracies aside, for which I don't care in a movie like this, the movie is full of unreasonable stuff like lighting grass aflame by firing a bullet in it, gunfights where most of the time people miss each other, even though they are a rock throw away from each other and generally stupid stuff people do for no reason. 70 years ago, this was probably passable or maybe even magnificent. The movie was in colour and it had Garry Cooper in the lead role and the action and the drama and the nowadays predictable character development (if you can call it that) were probably amazing and it was hard to believe that you are watching something as fun and as exciting as this. Nowadays, all of that falls flat. The whole thing never feels so bad it's good, it mostly feels bad and my grandpa and me made fun of the movie almost during it's whole runtime. It isn't the worst western movie ever made, but it certainly isn't even close to the good ones, yet alone the best. If you like this genre or you can somehow find the way not to notice all the culturally dated and contrived elements along with plentiful platter of simply dumb stuff, "Distant Drums" is an OK movie to watch when bored, but not a lot more than that. At least I now have a precious memory of watching it with my grandpa who couldn't probably even dream that he will one day watch it on his own modern television. 5.5/10! Only for the most hardcore western fans and people who have nostalgia for it.
Review of Distant Drums
