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Must See Movie...

Good story, Not enough for a whole film

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

A film with more than the usual spoiler issues. Talking about it in any detail feels akin to handing you a gift-wrapped present and saying, "I hope you like it -- It's a thriller about a diabolical secret experiment."

I enjoyed the actual film Tumbleweeds, but I'm restricting my comments here to Hart's famous farewell speech to his fans that prefaces the movie.I have seldom seen or heard anything as moving as that speech. Yes, there are moments when it verges on becoming unintentionally humorous to a more cynical modern audience. Yes, Hart is highly dramatic, and very much the old time barnstorming actor that he had been before beginning his movie career. It is a heightened type of performance that is out of sync with the age we live in, and some viewers have described it as somewhat embarrassing to watch.But none of that matters a bit. Hart's unquestionably sincere emotion and heartfelt expression of his feelings about the old days of movie making are so powerful that I can't watch this sequence without being moved to tears every time. There's one part where he has to pause for a moment before continuing, when he gets choked up over the memories of a beloved horse. The sheer, raw spectacle of such intensely personal feelings might well be too much for jaded modern audiences, and therefore might inspire embarrassed laughter.But the sad dignity of the old actor transcends such scorn, and raises the speech to an unforgettable experience that every old movie fan should see at least once.

If William S. Hart's birth date listed on the IMDb is accurate, and my math is correct, he would have been sixty one years old in the picture, which I find to be pretty amazing. Considering that his on screen sweetheart Miss Molly (Barbara Bedford) in the story is twenty two, I'd say that some of the early silents didn't let realism get in the way of a good story. Hart does show his age though in the opening minutes of the 1939 re-release version of the film where he opines about the death of the Wild West and his love of making movies. However there are moments where he goes for melodrama and it comes across as almost comical yet sad at the same time.This is the only Hart film I've been able to get my hands on, and I'm glad to have been able to see the legendary cowboy in even this one effort. As far as stories go, it's all fairly standard and formulaic, but with some neat elements mixed in. For example, after viewing a few hundred Westerns over the years, not one in the bunch ever mentioned the positions of cowpokes in a cattle drive before. Here we're treated to a couple of neat title cards depicting a Pointer and a Wheeler, pretty cool I thought.As for action scenes, two instances involving Hart are worth mentioning as stand out. There's the pole vault he used to escape the 'Sooner' stockade in the latter part of the film, along with that magnificent ride on horseback into the Cherokee Strip; that race sequence looked phenomenal.Hart's sidekick in the film goes by Kentucky Rose (Lucien Littlefield), with the gnarly bearded look that reminds one of those two 'Fuzzy's' - Knight and St. John. He gets entangled in a somewhat unbelievable relationship with the pioneering Widow Riley (Lillian Leighton), and it looks like he won't be a 'tumbleweed' by the end of the story. Most of Kentucky's comedy relief comes by way of facial expressions; for his part, it's a hoot to see how Hart deals with a frustrating cowlick."Tumbleweeds" winds up symbolizing a way of life that was already disappearing by the time of the late 1800's, a life characterized by a constant roaming and search for meaning. Hart and Kentucky epitomize the 'tumbleweeds' of the story, finding themselves out of place and out of synch with a country that wants to settle down, with Hart's character best expressing the sentiment evoked by the film's story - "The only land I'll settle down on will be under a tombstone".

I can see how one would be sentimental over William S. Hart's last Western, especially considering Hart was such a sentimentalist himself. But, his prime was years ago, with such films as "Hell's Hinges" (1916), "The Narrow Trail" (1917) and "Wagon Tracks" (1919). "Tumbleweeds" is far removed from those Hart vehicles. Hart had done away with his patented good bad-man persona; here, he's a gentler and fatter, goofy but good-natured, old cowboy. Hart also gets a dimwitted comedic sidekick, unfortunately. The filmmakers, first, attempt some romantic imagery, which generally fails, and, then, aim too much for humor, with lots of buffoonery. This new style probably reflects Hart's attempts to emulate the new B-Western shoot-em-ups, which had been surpassing his more adult Westerns in popularity by attracting a large audience of young boys.The villains suddenly impose a more dramatic tone to the second half of the film, and lead it to its inevitable conclusion. The fatality of the open frontier in the story mirrors that of Hart's career, but rather than the evident passion and romanticism one gets in his earlier pictures, we get song title cards. Additionally, Hart is competing for a civilized woman here, rather than for his Christian soul. At least, it's nice to see a more friendly, if brief, treatment of Native-Americans in this Hart outing. And, Hart does have one more exciting, well-edited horserace climax in him, but it was definitely time to hang up the saddle.

William S. Hart makes a moving speech before the movie begins, creating in us a feeling of nostalgia for the old westerns. In the film he is a cowboy that together with all the people that live in that strip of land, has to abandon it for it will be distributed to newcomers.After a certain date no person can enter that area, if they do they will be arrested, and will be called "sooners". All the people are waiting for the moment to come, in a small town, including Hart and his side kick, and Hart falls in love with the half sister of the villain. There is a big contrast in the film between the scenes that show the town, the newcomers, the rush, which are all excellent, with the incredibly naive scenes with the villains. It is hard to believe a film could be so good in certain moments and look so primitive in other scenes, good thing is that those scenes are a small part of it.