The villainous turns by Jon Voight (as a hard-hearted Mormon bishop) and Terence Stamp (as a bloodthirsty Brigham Young) would have been more fun if they weren't part of such a clumsy campaign to lay this tragedy at the church's doorstep.

| Dec 3, 2007

Muddled, sloppy, and obfuscating.

| Original Score: 1/5 | Aug 31, 2007

The workmanlike craftsmanship of Cain's filmmaking almost (but never quite) smooths over the ham-fisted way he conceives the story.

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | Aug 30, 2007

A plodding and highly questionable history lesson.

| Original Score: D | Aug 29, 2007

With its complete lack of empathy for early Mormons and simplistic rendering of historical figures, September Dawn is that rare movie that actually deserves whatever condemnation might come from religious groups.

| Original Score: D | Aug 27, 2007

Religious and thematic issues aside, September Dawn is well-crafted as a revisionist Western with a message.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Aug 24, 2007

The maudlin, grotesque western September Dawn apes Schindler's List in hopes of creatinga Christian Holocaust picture.

Full Review | Original Score: 1.5/5 | Aug 24, 2007

Why does this film even exist?

| Original Score: 0/4 | Aug 24, 2007

Disturbingly awful.

| Original Score: 1.5/4 | Aug 24, 2007

[The film] too often feels like a very elaborate episode of Gunsmoke.

Full Review | Aug 24, 2007

[Director Cain] stops short of calling Osama bin Laden a Mormon sympathizer, but maybe that'll be on the DVD.

| Aug 24, 2007

It turns a complicated story of religious bigotry and paranoia, with visitations from God, self-appointed prophets and 'divine' instruction into a dry history lesson.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Aug 24, 2007

What a strange, confused, unpleasant movie this is.

| Original Score: 0/4 | Aug 24, 2007

It's waxy Classics Illustrated cinema.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Aug 24, 2007

Even if one gets past the movie's controversial depictions, there is the matter of its second-rate, made-for-television fare -- the poor battle choreography, the wooden editing and the cheesy writing.

| Aug 23, 2007

Bombastic, slow-drying dramatization with lead-weight dialogue and a turgid romantic subplot.

Full Review | Original Score: 1/4 | Aug 23, 2007

This handsome indie Western damningly recounts the 1857 slayings of 120 settlers passing through Utah, but the didactic presentation, grim speechifying and tacked-on love story all signify a less-than-healthy regard for the audience's intelligence.

Full Review | Aug 21, 2007

September Dawn has the ham-fisted lyricism of political ads and pharmaceutical commercials.

Full Review | Aug 21, 2007

The real problem is that September Dawn isn't a very good movie. It moves too much like a public-school history pageant and gives us mono-dimensional characters who speak dialogue that fairly reeks of printer's ink.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/5 | Jun 21, 2007

Forget Grindhouse. September Dawn is the year's first honest-to-goodness exploitation flick.

| Original Score: 1/4 | Jun 17, 2007