You don't expect subtlety or underacting in a movie made by Cecil B. DeMille, and you don't get it here. There are several stories blended together around the idea of Cooper, a Texas Ranger, come to the Canadian north woods to capture a miscreant murderer, the half breed Corbeau.This Corbeau is a nasty guy. He and the other half breeds are trying to stir up the Blackfeet and the Cree against the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, intending to declare independence and kill everybody who doesn't like their new country. Cooper is swept up in the intrigues. Robert Preston is a Mountie who falls for the devoted but treacherous half breed woman, Louvette, played by Paulette Goddard in the go-anywhere accent she used when she played foreign spitfires. She was such an attractive and sexy young woman, it's a shame she didn't get better parts.There is a dull romantic triangle involving Sergeant Preston Foster and another woman he worships, Madeleine Carroll, and there are several shoot outs between half breeds and the RCMP. The half breeds have got their hands on a Gatling gun, which gives them a kind of edge. I didn't like the fact that there were two actors in supporting roles whose names I always mix up -- Robert Preston and Preston Foster. But I was on the side of the Northwest Mounted Police at every moment. One scene -- an aborted patrol -- shows us some skilled extras in formation that make John Ford's cavalrymen look like amateurs. I also was enthralled by the titles -- Inspector, Constable, Chief of Inspectors, Chief of Constables, Constable Inspector-in-Chief, and Queen of England.Gary Cooper is young and handsome and looks like he belongs on a horse. He may have had the longest limbs of any major Hollywood actor. And he adopts the rural speech and hick-like characteristics he used in "Sergeant York." "I was just a-passin' this way." "A feller has to take what he's a-got a-comin' to him." "I ain't a-got a-nothing' hyeah but maters, braid, and a-hoppin' john." (Well -- not that.) Sure, it's dumb. All the usual cinematic conventions are followed. There's no real mistaking the evil doers because they're all ugly or comic or both. The Francis Ford role is taken by Lynne Overman as Todd McDuff, a supposed Scotsman who lays it on a little thick. But he's one of the more likable sidekicks in the genre, so let McDuff lay on.It IS colorful, especially considering that that is no outdoor scene in it. It's all shot on a sound stage. Still, you have never seen so many crimson tunics. I think by this time they had stopped using dried scaled insects to produce the color.

Watching the first 20 minutes of this film I thought I could not go on. It seems incredibly dated, with an overacting Paulette Godard and Gary Cooper seeming ill at ease. Color was something recent in 1940 and this film made quite good use of it. As the film goes on it becomes more interesting, it was also inspired by a real fact,the Riel Indian Rebellion. This rebellion was made by the Indians joining the Métis, under the command of Louis Riel. The Métis were part Indian and part French or British Canadian, but in this rebellion only the French Métis took part.There is a tragic love story between Paulette Godard and Robert Preston and a rivalry between Cooper and Preston Foster for the love of Madeleine Carrol. After a while you also get involved in the story and Cooper's performance improves. He is the gallant, modest, quiet Texan Dusty Rivers and at the end of the film they are all grateful to him including the audience , because after all he was quite a star.

Gary Cooper (white), George Bancroft (black), and Akim Tamiroff (brown) characters are id'd as good, bad, and well-intentioned by the colors of the hats they wear.Paulette Goddard's scene hiring the Indian Hit Man is straight from the silents.Lynne Overman's burr is the lineal ancestor of James Doohan's.People still revere De Mille?

"Oh Dusty, you're an angel in leather!" "I love you so terrible bad I feel good!" "You're the sweetest poison that ever got into a man's blood!"Campy and implausible enough to be written up in "The Fifty Worst Films of All Time", yet too slow to be as amusing as "The Conqueror". Set in 19th century Quebec, the characters mill around a wilderness fort, chase each other and a gattling gun, lust after each other, and spout ridiculous dialogue. It takes forever and drags a lot, but it looks nice for something shot on a soundstage, and there are some decent actors like Gary Cooper and Madeline Carroll in it, even if they look kind of embarrassed.What keeps this from being other boring costume melodramas like "Unconquered" is the usually wooden Paulette Goddard as a half-breed temptress. (You just know you're in for something bad when you see those words) We're talking high camp, over-the-top ludicrous, with her silly accent and sillier makeup, and supreme overconfidence in her ability to handle a role like this. It's worth tuning it to see her sashay around in her leather-and-feather costumes, chewing the scenery while doing stuff like public spankings and tormenting a bound Robert Preston.