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Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

It takes place in Kansas a few years before the Civil War began in 1861, and it outlines the attempt of the nattily dressed Jeff Chandler to change Kansas from a territory to his own empire, town by town. The routine goes like this. Chandler sends his band of masked men into town dressed as "Redlegs" to hurrah the place and break windows and commit pillage and outrage the local gals. Then he and his men later ride into town as themselves, the "Jayhawkers", and promise to protect the good folk, who will have nothing more to fear from the Redlegs. When the Mafia do this, it's called extortion.Who were the Jayhawkers, you ask, and well you might. They were supposedly free-staters as opposed to the pro-slavery faction. The Redlegs were a violent splinter group of the Jayhawkers. But these are just names. In fact, Kansas was a mess. The war between slavery and freedom deteriorated into a series of bloody raids back and forth -- one of them led by John Brown. So it's not necessary to try to figure out who Chandler represented historically. He's a fiction. Besides, who wants to remember all those slang names -- Jayhawkers, Redlegs, Border Ruffians (eg., Jesse James), Carpetbaggers, and Copperheads? You can forget all of that. This is the story of a man whose reach exceeded his grasp.According to this tale, though, Chandler might have made it if it hadn't been for Fess Parker as the Army's undercover agent who finally undoes Chandler. Parker is the main character. It's too bad because his is a complex role. He has to change from hating Chandler, to admiring and protecting him, to betraying him. And he simply mopes his way through the part, not convincing for a second.Chandler's role is, if anything, even more complex, a little like Wolf Larson in "The Sea Wolf" but without the sadism. He's delicately brutal -- about others, about himself, and about life in general -- and not devoid of brotherly feelings towards the secret traitor in their midst. (If that's what those sentiments represent; and let's have no remarks about homoeroticism.) Chandler is very suave. He teaches Parker to read the classics. "Ya done taught me about fellers like that Frenchman Alexander." Chandler smiles condescendingly as if speaking to a kindergartener, "He was a Greek." (Well, almost; he was Macedonian.) Chandler drinks only wine, and only GOOD wine. You get the picture. When Jeff Chandler finally establishes his empire, his idea of governance is simple. There will be peace. I decide what "peace" means. Anybody who disobeys in the slightest will be summarily shot. He will unquestionably govern his empire from Chandler City, in Chandler County, in the Republic of Chandlerstan.Jeff Chandler handles this complicated and ambiguous role as best he can. It's easy to imagine lesser actors in the role. Fess Parker, for one. But Chandler always seems to carry a tentative, wounded quality around with him. His smiles don't seem real. And his proclamations sound earnest, passionate, but neither confident nor boastful. There's little of Little Caesar in his Little Napoleon.The photography and locations will suffice and the musical score has been lauded. Elmer Bernstein probably heard it before scoring "The Magnificent Seven."

The Jayhawkers maybe unique in the annals of screen history in that as a film with a Civil War era plot it makes absolutely no mention of slavery. Nor are there any black people in this cast.What we have here in ante-bellum Kansas is the story of Luke Darcy who envisions himself as starting some kind of fascistic territorial republic in the struggle for Kansas's loyalty. Jeff Chandler plays Darcy and he is a fascinatingly evil man with a great deal of charisma. To bring him down military governor Herbert Rudley uses ex-renegade raider Fess Parker. Parker and Chandler have a history and it involves Parker's late wife who Chandler ran off with and abandoned. Parker's got ample reason to just shoot him down like a dog, but Rudley wants him alive to stand trial. Complicating things further is Nicole Maurey and her two kids who Parker's fallen for and then Chandler takes an interest when he sees her. The story does get a bit silly at times, but the players are all doing their best. Henry Silva plays one of Chandler's raiders who has an incredible jealousy of Parker and a barely disguised gay crush on Chandler. Jerome Moross wrote the music score and it's lively and quickens the pace of this film. Fans of the Wagon Train series will recognize parts of the score as Wagon Train's theme. The story of Kansas before the Civil War, usually with John Brown as the protagonist has supplied the cinema with a whole range of films. The Jayhawkers with the charismatic, fascistic, but wholly fictitious Luke Darcy is far from the best one ever done.

A fun to watch western containing Fess Parker's best performance, the show is stolen by Jeff Chandler's performance as the baddie you hate to see taken down. However, as outstanding as Chandler is, the real star of the film is Jerome Moross' pulse-pounding score, which predates his legendary music for THE BIG COUNTRY. It's every bit as good, if not better. Henry Silva is (of course) scuzzy as a hired gun.Catch it. Any western fan won't regret it.

"The Jayhawkers" was released in 1959 and starred Jeff Chandler as an ambitious person eager to control pre-War Kansas, and Fess Parker has to try and stop him in his scheme. Reason: Parker, as Cam Beeker, had broken out of a federal prison to try and come back to his wife, and his ranch in Kansas. He finds that his wife has died, and the ranch has been sold to a family, headed by French actress Nicole Maurey. He also learns that Luke Darcy, played by Chandler, was the reason behind his wife's death and the ranch being lost. Beeker becomes a member of the gang in order to win his pardon from the territorial governor of Kansas. Upon joining the gang of raiders calling themselves the Jayhawkers, he starts to accept the ambition of Darcy, because the man seems intent on bringing peace to the territory, but under his rule. The viewer of this watchable western will be asking which way Parker's character will finally go; either turn Darcy over to the governor, or become part of the plan to control the territory. A good 7/10