Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
I Don't Care, March 12, 2005
I don't care if the film is historically inaccurate. Errol Flynn may not have been an ideal figure in real life but the movies he was in, well, I was raised with the 30's and 40's films and his films always gave me a hero to look up to and how things should have been done. They inspired me and taught me right from wrong and how to treat people fairly. Along with my Dad's guidelines, I was better for it. That's all I care about, not whether it was historically accurate. Mr. Flynn, even in real life, was a chip off the old block. I love this film. I grew up with it and it still gets an emotional rise out of me when I view it. Its what Custer should have been in my opinion and as a young boy watching this for the first time, influenced me for the rest of my life. Errol Flynn was my hero after I saw this and his WWII Burma movie. Its a shame he's gotten a bad shake from the critics whether now or in the past.
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14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Very Gracious Thing, May 20, 2000
After "The Adventures of Robin Hood," this is Errol Flynn's best movie. As noted elsewhere, it's worthless as history. But the casting of Flynn as Custer has a resonance that burns up the screen, and behind the romanticism one glimpses a portrait of an unhappy, self-destructive man who is a hero in spite of himself. Flynn's farewell scene with Olivia de Havilland is almost unbearably moving, as if both sensed the real-life parallel and the future awaiting them both. This is a rousing, action-packed movie with just about everything: adventure, comedy and romance... but it's one of the rare ones that also gets under your skin.
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30 of 35 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
How Does One Praise A Fine But Inaccurate Film?, June 28, 2002
No one doubts that THEY DIED WITH THEIR BOOTS ON with Errol Flynn is a terrific film. It is the last movie that Flynn shares with Olivia de Havilland, and their chemistry shared over a long film marriage is touching and palpable. Flynn's interpretation was to play Custer as a western version of his own hell-raising self, and he dominates each scene in which he appears. He is alternately heroic, funny, sarcastic, haughty, and sacriligious. His co-stars very capably allow Flynn to bounce off them. Against Crazy Horse (Anthony Quinn), Flynn is solemn and candid. Against General Winfield Scott (Sidney Greenstreet), he is properly subservient. Against his Indian hating subordinate officer played by Arthur Kennedy, he is full of righteous fury. The climactic battle at the Little Big Horn is a paean to self-sacrifice and honor. The film does not go wrong internally. Its fault, if one can call it that, is that it bears no relation to historical truth. Every major incident in the film from Custer's days in West Point, to his conduct under battle, to his relationship to his wife, and to his role in the annihilation of him and his troopers at the Little Big Horn are either grossly exaggerated or outrageous lies. Especially disturbing is the movie's suggestion that Custer sacrificed the lives of the men under his command as a means of political expedience. The literal truth was Custer and all his 7th Cavalry were slaughtered only because of his obstinancy in not believing the reports of his Indian guides.
To pass judgment on TDWTBO is to walk a shaky line between lauding a shiny object without questioning too deeply about what makes that object shine. Perhaps a needed corrective would be a disclaimer in the closing credits that what you see is not necessarily what you get. Sort of like life.
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