Product Details

• Actors: Jon Voight, Trent Ford, Tamara Hope, Terence Stamp, Krisinda Cain
• Directors: Christopher Cain
• Writers: Christopher Cain, Carole Whang Schutter
• Producers: Christopher Cain, Kevin Matossian, Michael Feinberg, Patrick Imeson, Scott Duthie
• Format: AC-3, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, DVD, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Language: French (Dolby Digital 5.1), English (Dolby Digital 5.1)
• Subtitles: English, Spanish, French
• Region: Region 1 encoding (US and Canada only)
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• Aspect Ratio: 1.78:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Rating: R (Restricted)
• Studio: Sony Pictures
• DVD Release Date: January 1, 2008
• Run Time: 110 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (51 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B000XJ5TOU
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #14,437 in Movies & TV (See Bestsellers in Movies & TV)

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Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com
September Dawn is an unusual hybrid: a love story, a Western, a historical drama, and a statement against religious intolerance. The fit between the four parts is uneasy at best. Christopher Cain (Young Guns) begins in 1877 as Utah governor Brigham Young (Terence Stamp, making no effort to disguise his British accent) presents his side of the story. (The director's son, Dean Cain, cameos as Joseph Smith.) The narrative then returns to 20 years before: A Missouri wagon party seeks permission from Bishop Jacob (Jon Voight) to rest on his land for a fortnight before continuing to California. Jacob gives his consent, but comes to regret his hospitality; after all, the state of Missouri forced his people to flee in order to practice their religion in peace. Then his son, Jonathan (Trent Ford), falls for the "gentile" Emily (Tamara Hope). Jacob becomes convinced the travelers will corrupt his entire community if he doesn't take action, so he negotiates with the Paiute tribe to execute the lot of them, leading to the Mountain Meadows Massacre of September 11th, 1857. On that date, as many as 140 settlers were killed, some by Native Americans, some by Mormons. Though the movie may have been made to "set the record straight," it seems more likely to offend modern-day members than to provide catharsis for descendents of the victims. Suffice to say, September Dawn was not produced with the support of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. --Kathleen C. Fennessy

Product Description
Academy Award® winner Jon Voight, Terence Stamp and Trent Ford star in this film based on the true story of the Mountain Meadows Massacre, the brutal murder of 120 men, women and children on September 11, 1857 as their wagon train passed through Utah on its way to California. The question of whether the attack was carried out by local Paiute Indians or by a renegade sect of the Mormon church remains unresolved to this day. Set against the breathtaking beauty of the Utah mountains, September Dawn explores what might have happened when the ill-fated settlers stopped near Cedar City to rest before completing the last leg of their journey. Local Mormon Bishop Jacob Samuelson (Voight) is suspicious of the group, so he dispatches his oldest son Jonathan (Ford) to spy on them. Jonathan soon falls in love with an angelic member of the wagon train, the minister's daughter Emily (Tamara Hope), and is horrified when he discovers that his father thinks the settlers are enemies of the church and is planning an attack on them. While Jonathan makes plans to escape with Emily, his father sets in motion a chain of events, fueled by revenge and fanaticism, which culminates in a violent and tragic ambush.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Not the best; not the worst, January 9, 2008

By	rgn (Indiana) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Surprised to see this film currently has a rating of 4.5 stars. I guess Mormon advocates haven't realized this item is up and open for comments. Glad I can get mine in before the comment wars begin. I liked the movie overall. As a professor of religion I know the story accords with historical facts of the Mountain Meadows massacre as well as we know them. It truly does show how human beings can do the most atrocious things to one another if they believe they receive the blessing of God in doing so. I would only wish they ask some basic epistemological questions about the justification of their claim to knowledge that it is God they are truly hearing. The film mentions possible motives like the belief the federal government was about to start a war against the Mormons and payback for the murder of Joseph Smith in Missouri. One explanation for the massacre the film does not address but needs to be explored is using religious justification for plain old greed. There was a lot of wealth, cattle and horses with that wagon train. The Paiutes didn't get it. Who did? The film nicely points out how John Lee is the only Mormon forced to suffer penalty for the event. As for the film itself, it is beautifully filmed. I thought the Davidovich character was shallow, and her death is left unexplained. The real clinker in the film, though, and the reason I reduce its rating to a three star, is the clumsily melodramatic love affair between the son of the Mormon Bishop and the daughter of the wagon train's minister. As part of that story you have the son being imprisoned by the Bishop by being chained at the ankle in a barn. The chain, though, is around his boot. Why doesn't the kid just remove his foot from the boot? That's the kind of silliness that creeps in when you import melodrama into this tragic story. My greatest concern: The Mormons (with the exception of the lovestruck son of the Bishop) were uniformly caricatured as the embodiment of hate, while those on the wagon train were uniformly portrayed as the embodiment of sweetness and light. That's too simple-minded an approach. There are other comments to be made, but I don't want to turn this into a lecture on religion. Good film, but not great by any stretch.

38 of 51 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Pre-mortem comment, December 6, 2007

By	Charles M. Strnad "Washed up jock" (Tulsa, OK) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Been waiting for this DVD to come out since first seeing it in the theatres- and having since read several histories about the historical event. There already have been numerous website slugfests about just how accurate the movie is, with most of the debate just re-emphasizing how, 150 years later, the Mormon community still struggles to reconcile this documented part of their church history.
But before the DVD is even released, and before the anticipated subsequent storm of prejudiced-laced customer "reviews" ( and it doesn't even matter which side they are for), let me just say that the "editorial review" summary ought to at least introduce the topic fairly. For one, it is hardly an issue of uncertainty whether or not Mormons participated in the massacre- indeed, the valid histories (even the source work by Juanita Brooks, herself a devout Mormon)all confirm that Mormons did most of the killing, and even eventually owned-up to that, but only after years of trying to pawn it off on the Paiute Indians. I've seen the movie and read the histories, and the only aspect of the movie which is somewhat "over-the-top" is its clear portrayal of Brigham Young as a main architect of the massacre; the available histories at least conclude that there is some doubt as to his actual role. Whether viewers of the movie liked the love story subplot or not isn't really what this movie is about, after all....it's just a cinematic technique used to make the history more personal (much like Cameron did with "Titanic", and Kate Winslett and Leonard DiCaprio).
But having said that, I'm sure the DVD release of this movie will again spark all the prejudicial comments about Mormons, etc.....but none of that changes the facts, and the movie does a fair job with that. But don't believe me- don't believe ANY reviewer: read the published histories, then you decide.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars September Dawn, May 25, 2009

By	Dennis Knorr "Dennis0540" (Corpus Christi, TX) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Great movie. A true story that needed to be told. Very eye opening for those who aren't familiar with the events that occurred at the "Mountian Meadow Massacre".