GamerTab That was an excellent one.

WillSushyMedia This movie was so-so. It had it's moments, but wasn't the greatest.

KnotStronger This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.

Billie Morin This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

Tweekums This B Western opens with protagonist Bill Doolin being released from prison on parole; he intends to go straight but things soon go wrong when the train he is travelling on is robbed by the Dalton Gang. While he never rode with them he knew them as friends so when one of them recognises and speaks to him the other passengers assume he is involved with the gang. He jumps off the train and gets away but rather than running he returns to town to answer questions. The sheriff doesn't want to hear any excuses though and tries to arrest Bill; he gets away once again and ends up hiding out with the Dalton Gang. This time he ends up riding with them although there first robbery goes disastrously wrong leaving many of the gang dead or wounded. It isn't ling before Bill, know known as 'The Cimarron Kid' is leading the gang as they rob banks and steal from trains across Oklahoma Territory. Eventually the law begins to catch up with them; but with one last job planned Bill reckons he can earn enough to buy a ranch in Argentina and live there with his sweetheart... of course things don't go according to plan.The plot for this western might not be that deep but there is plenty of solid action and a decent cast of characters. Audie Murphy puts in a decent performance playing against type as Doolin. Beverly Tyler is good enough as love interest Carrie Roberts but Yvette Duguay is the most memorable of the female cast; she plays Rose whose job it is to get information about targets for their robberies... it is great to see a female character doing more than occasionally act as a nurse or only get involved in the action when it is absolutely necessary; Rose is very much one of the gang. There is plenty of varied action including people jumping from a train onto horses; a burning hay wagon being pulled through a town and an impressive shoot out in a railway yard. The film was made in some stunning scenery although, as was often the case, it is Californian scenery not Oklahoman. This might not be an all time great but it is a pretty good western and fans of the genre should check it out if they get a chance.

MartinHafer When I received a DVD from Netflix with this film and "The Man From the Alamo" on it, I wondered why I'd placed this disk on my queue. After all, I am not a huge fan of westerns and the films appeared pretty unremarkable. However, when I noticed both films were directed by Budd Boetticher, I remembered that THIS was why I'd put these films on my list many months earlier. Boetticher was a wonderful director who managed to make his westerns better than the norm--with stories that lack many of the usual clichés. Unfortunately, this film is not typical of Boetticher's better films, as there are a lot of clichés spread throughout the movie.This is an odd film, since it is a remake of another movie ("The Doolins of Oklahoma") that was released just three years earlier! While remakes were very common, remaking a film so quickly wasn't. In the case of "The Cimarron Kid", Audie Murphy takes on the role previously played by Randolph Scott--and, frankly, no one can play a western role better than Scott, so Murphy is at a big disadvantage.The film begins with Murphy being pardoned and released from prison. It seems that he'd been convicted of robbery based solely on his friendships and the law finally realized her was innocent. However, when the train he's on is robbed by his old friends, people naturally assume he's one of them--and he's a wanted man all over again! So, in an odd twist, he DOES join the gang. But because he's basically a swell guy, he leads the gang in becoming more thoughtful and less prone to just blasting people--sort of a kinder, gentler form of banditry. I really expected this all to pay off better than it did. But the film is morally ambiguous and seems to say that Murphy is a good bad-guy! And, until it concludes, there are lots of clichés--such as the quick-tempered guy (Hugh O'Brian) who you just know will have a showdown with Murphy sooner or later, the lady who thinks Murphy is not beyond redemption and several others. Despite the clichés and the strange leading character, the film was well made and is interesting--even with the dumb ending that made little sense.I should also add that while I love Boetticher films, I also hate westerns that portray and glamorize minor western villains like the Daltons, Jesse James or Billy the Kid. 99% of the exploits they do on film are untrue and the men were mostly a lot of cheap crooks--yet Hollywood raised them almost to hero status and fictionalized their lives. So, when Murphy infiltrates this famous gang, I felt a bit annoyed...the sort of annoyed that history teachers like myself are good at becoming!By the way, during the roundhouse scene, why was it important for Rose to activate the turntable?! Really. The gang was NOT using a train!!

MARIO GAUCI This emerges as a pretty good example of the typical Audie Murphy Western vehicle – though of lesser quality to the only one I had previously watched, NO NAME ON THE BULLET (1959) and, being Budd Boetticher's first Western, clearly a minor effort in his canon. Many films of this era treated (in a heavily romanticized manner) the exploits of famous outlaws of the Old West: Murphy appears as Bill Doolin and, at one point, he is told by the leader of The Dalton Gang that "They'll be writing ballads about us" and, sure enough, their exploits were later immortalized in music by the Country Rock band Eagles in "Doolin-Dalton", a song off of their second album "Desperado" (1973). Typically, Murphy is seen forced into a life of crime by circumstances or, more precisely, the persecution of a law-enforcement officer (while another, played by Leif Erickson, is more sympathetic to his plight). As ever, the gang is an eclectic assortment of characters: affable Noah Beery Jr. is their leader, Hugh O'Brian the red-headed hot-tempered challenger, James Best the ladies' man, Frank Silvera the half-breed, etc.; interestingly, we get a couple of romances going on (Murphy with the daughter of a man who shelters them and Best with a fiery Mexican girl) and the female characters are surprisingly strong for this type of film. Reassembling themselves in the wake of a bank hold-up gone awry (the film's best action sequence, climaxing in Beery's memorable come-uppance with the spilling coins a graphic substitution for blood), the gang is subsequently betrayed by the 'inside man' in a train robbery they try to pull off. Murphy is eventually persuaded to give himself up, with Erickson promising him a fair trial this time around. Shot in pleasant Technicolor, the generically-titled THE CIMARRON KID serves up compact, pacy and unpretentious entertainment – perfect viewing after a hard day's work.

Brian Camp THE CIMARRON KID (1951) was one of about two dozen westerns Audie Murphy starred in at Universal Pictures in the period from 1950-1966. In brief, it tells the story of outlaw Bill Doolin who rode with the infamous Dalton gang in the disastrous raid on Coffeyville, Kansas, and went on to lead the gang's survivors in a subsequent robbery spree. A WWII hero-turned-movie star, Murphy plays Doolin as a misunderstood youth who gets forced into a life of crime through guilt by association and persecution by an overzealous railroad detective. Further complications ensue when Doolin falls in love with a rancher's daughter who wants him to go straight. The film was directed by western specialist Budd Boetticher who provides quite a number of interesting touches. One of the gang members, played by James Best, has a Mexican girlfriend, known as Cimarron Rose (Yvette Dugay), who is an equal participant in the action and is used to acquire information about payroll shipments and assorted robbery targets. The other major woman character, rancher's daughter Carrie Roberts (Beverly Tyler), is pretty strong and forthright on her own and makes no attempt to play coy in her meetings with Doolin. She even comes up with a plan to help him leave the outlaw life, but one which he rejects.Also, there is a significant black character, a man named Stacy (Frank Silvera) who provides support services for the gang, and who, while not actually a participant in their crimes, is dealt an equal share of the proceeds. There is a scene of him at home with his family--a wife and three children--that indicates his choice of a domestic life over an outlaw one, yet he is always treated with respect by the other men. The rest of the cast consists of a mixed bag of character actors like Noah Beery Jr., Leif Erickson, Roy Roberts, John Hubbard, and Rand Brooks, and up-and-coming Universal contract players: James Best, Hugh O'Brian, John Bromfield, John Hudson, William Reynolds, Palmer Lee (Greg Palmer). At times they threaten to crowd the soft-spoken, unassuming Murphy off the screen, but Audie ultimately manages to hold his own. Boetticher and Murphy would work together one more time on Murphy's last film, A TIME FOR DYING (1971), in which the actor has a cameo as Jesse James.