Supelice Dreadfully Boring

Dorathen Better Late Then Never

Breakinger A Brilliant Conflict

Billy Ollie Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

MartinHafer This B-western sure has a lot of familiar faces--Richard Dix, Preston Foster, Robert Barat, Cliff Edwards, Guinn "Big Boy" Williams, Leo Carrillo and Jack LaRue. While none of these names were exactly big names at the time, this did give the film a bit better cast than you'd usually expect with such a film.Edwards, Williams and Dix run a riverboat along the Louisiana-Texas border just after the Civil War. They get an idea from Leo Carrillo to go into the cattle business--as they see that there is a huge need up north for beef. During the first year, the men (along with Dix's sister) manage to create a prosperous cattle ranch--but into their seemingly charmed life comes Carrillo and his bandit friends to rob them blind. As Carrillo's character reasons, as he gave them the idea for the ranch, the cattle are just as much his!! He disappears from the film for a while...only to appear again much later.Time suddenly passes as you see the years flying past the screen. Dix's daughter has married Foster and they have a child. Unfortunately, instead of Foster relaxing and enjoying his success, he acts as if it's him against everyone--including the railroads! Will he have a change of heart or will he lose everything he loves in the process? See it for yourself to find out what happens next.Some of this film is quite formulaic. The idea of a cattle baron becoming greedy and trying to squeeze out the competition certainly is not new--nor is the notion of two friends becoming estranged in the process. The climax is amazingly good--and very violent! Generally, the acting is very good, but the casting of Carrillo is odd, as he's supposed to be a Cajun--a FRENCH-speaking Cajun. With his heavy Spanish accent, this seemed like an odd choice for the actor to play this role. As for the plot, it's very familiar but entertaining. Not great but worth seeing if you like westerns.

sddavis63 A pretty decent movie about life on the Texas-Louisiana border in the years immediately following the US Civil War. Richard Dix and Preston Foster play Dan Taylor and Paxton Bryce. As the movie opens, they're former Confederate blockade runners running a river boat carrying freight up and down the Sabine River. They run into Dominique Beauchard (Leo Carillo), an unscrupulous Louisiana cattle rancher who rounds up loose cattle in chaotic post-war Texas and runs them across the river to Louisiana. Taylor and Bryce realize the potential of cattle ranching and so give up their riverboat and start buying up land in Texas. This becomes the start of their "American Empire." Foster is really the key to the movie. Dix may receive top billing, but all he does is play off Foster. Foster's Bryce is the character who changes and grows. He has his big dream, gets married to Bryce's sister (Frances Gifford) and they have a son (Merrill Rodin) and heir to the empire. But along the way Bryce changes. Building the empire becomes all that counts. He clashes with the other ranchers in the area by refusing to let them run their cattle over his land, and he blocks progress that would have benefited them all by refusing permission for a railway right of way across his land. The end result is ongoing conflict between Foster and the ranchers, and even between Foster and Taylor, who doesn't like Bryce's way of doing business. Eventually, even his family life falls apart because of his greed. In the midst of it all Beauchard doesn't disappear but remains a thorn in Bryce's side. Providing a few chuckles throughout are the exchanges between Sailaway (Guinn Williams) and Runty (Cliff Edwards), who work for Taylor and Bryce on both the riverboat and at the ranch.All this leads up to a pretty good gunfight at the end (which is really the only extensive gunfight in the movie) and, of course, to Bryce's eventual redemption and reconciliation with those he's pushed away. It all works pretty well. It's obviously a lower budget type of movie and there's nothing fancy about it, but it's good fun and pretty quick. 6/10

classicsoncall This turned out to be a fairly entertaining Western, as well as an interesting analysis of a once forward thinking individual whose aging conservatism turns rigid. Paxton Bryce (Preston Foster) winds up coming full circle by the film's blazing finale, having had to endure the alienation of those closest to him. You can figure out fairly early how this one's going to go even though the happy ending is tempered by the loss of Bryce's young son.Richard Dix is top billed as Bryce's long time friend and business partner Dan Taylor. Taylor's sister happens on the scene to provide the romantic interest as Bryce's future wife Abby (Frances Gifford). The film doesn't spend too much time developing that relationship, but that's not the central focus. The story has more to do with the regular expansion of the partners' land holdings and cattle business, with Leo Carrillo providing the foil as a hustling cattle thief. Except for the fact that he's the villain of the piece, he plays it pretty much the way he would as the Cisco Kid's sidekick Pancho in the 1950's TV series. He may not mangle as much of the English language here, but his temperament and mannerisms make it difficult to see him as the bad guy he's intended to be.Guinn Williams delivers in the comic relief role as 'Sailaway', a name derived from his free wheeling riverboat days with Bryce and Taylor. I've always enjoyed his roles in movies starring Roy Rogers, John Wayne and Errol Flynn, though here he's not in the usual sidekick role. Instead, he's a loyal employee of the two river men turned ranchers, who gets his kicks by verbally sparring with his buddy Runty (Cliff Edwards). Sailaway helps make the save near the end of the story when he gets wind of Dominique Beauchard's (Carrillo) plans to raid the town of Riverford. By that time, the opposition of the local ranchers to Bryce's restriction of his range land is about to get ugly, and becomes the turning point in bringing Bryce back to his senses.Though the open range theme had been done time and time again in 'B' Westerns of the Forties and Fifties, the formula still works well here. It reaches a rather dramatic but sad climax when Bryce's seven year old son dies from injuries suffered in a cattle stampede trying to enforce his father's rigid rules. I don't believe I've ever seen an element as harsh in service to a film of the era before. It works, but one can't help feeling that maybe they could have come to a happy ending without the loss of Pax Jr.

bsmith5552 "American Empire" is another of a series of modestly budgeted features produced by Harry "Pop" Sherman, who also was responsible for the highly successful Hopalong Cassidy series. This one deals with the emergeance of the cattle ranches in Texas in the years following the Civil War. Two soldiers of fortune, Dan Taylor (Richard Dix) and Pax Bryce (Preston Foster) are ruuning a freight business from their riverboat. One day they meet up with the unscrupulous Dominique Beauchard (Leo Carillo) who is driving cattle to his home state of Louisiana. The boys agree to transport the cattle to their destination for a set fee. When Beauchard fails to pay up they keep the cattle and decide to go into the cattle ranching business. Into the mix comes Taylor's sister Abby (Frances Gifford) with whom Bryce falls in love and marries. They soon have a son Pax Jr. (Merrill Rodin) and Pax Sr. becomes more and more ambitious as time goes on, much to the chagrin of his partner Dan. He has angered the smaller ranchers by refusing them permission to drive their cattle across his land. The ranchers decide to stampede the cattle through but Pax Jr. is killed in the stampede. Bryce becomes distraught and decides to erect barb wire fences around the ranch which forces Dan to dissolve their partnership. All this is resolved at the end when all realize that progress must prevail over the ambitions of one man. Also in the cast are Guinn "Big Boy" Williams and Cliff Edwards as the comic relief, Jack LaRue and Chris-Pin Martin as Carillo's henchmen, and veterans William Farnum and Hal Taliaferro in other roles. Foster is really the star of the movie despite being billed third. He delivers a solid performance. Dix, who was top billed, is really only a supporting player. Gifford looks lovely as the heroine. The action is well staged and there's one dandy of a gunfight at the climax of the film. A good western.