Konterr Brilliant and touching

ChicDragon It's a mild crowd pleaser for people who are exhausted by blockbusters.

Micah Lloyd Excellent characters with emotional depth. My wife, daughter and granddaughter all enjoyed it...and me, too! Very good movie! You won't be disappointed.

Sammy-Jo Cervantes There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

Richie-67-485852 Westerns of the 40's and even better the 50's held their own for entertainment and pleasure. Who doesn't like a story involving outdoors, cattle, the untamed west, shoot-outs, ranching, a love interest and more that when thrown together well gives us a memorable good time of it all. This is not a magnificent western but instead a standard for the western itself. On that note it delivers. Alan Ladd has a quiet type nature that is easy on the viewer and even when he gets mad he is still a nice guy. By contrast, the bad guys are just bad and stay that way all the time. In the background is still the civil war that is over but bad will is still harbored which in time goes away as we know. We get to like the characters and care about them having spent some background time getting to know them. This movie works and for that reason you get to spend your precious time watching a worthy movie. Everyone wins including the happy ending which wont let you down. Be clear that towns sprung up all over and it was the people in those towns that made sure they survived this difficult time in our history. It wasn't easy but then, anything worth having has a price beyond what we can see. The question is: Will we pay that price to have it? You see that is the true test of how bad you want it. In this movie, men on both sides risk their lives but the side that stuck up for law & order, for what's right and true will win every time. Good slow-eatin popcorn movie or delicious snacking with a tasty drink here. Mount-up and lets ride!

drystyx There is a lot about this sprawling Western that resembles SHANE.Again, Ladd plays a quiet man who is tired of killing. Here, though, he is not a gunfighter, but rather an experienced soldier who learned to use a hand gun very well.The real star of this film, though, isn't either hero Ladd or heroine Virginia Mayo, but Edmond O'Brien.O'Brien's character becomes a parallel to the Stonewall character of Elisha Cook, Jr. in Shane. The similarities are more in what happens with the character than in the character.However, unlike Stonewall, who is simply a pathetic doomed soul with little input in SHANE, O'Brien is given a chance to eat the scenery here, going from drunk to respected architect to manager of a new town to peace keeper for the town.The story is his. We even get to see him with family. He begins at the low end of the totem pole, then rises to great achievement, only to find himself in a situation where he must make a terrible decision.In ways, this film is superior to SHANE, and SHANE is a classic. The bad guys, however, were cloned too much after Jack Palance's Wilson, and therein lies the weakness. There are two sadistic bad men here, and their characters just aren't fresh, and too much like Wilson.Still, it's got a lot of character, and a lot of characters who make this a top Western.

MartinHafer When Alan Ladd and his partners bring their cattle from Texas to Missouri, local cattle buyer Anthony Caruso cheats the men and treats them like he's doing them a favor in the process! Ladd, however, doesn't fight--having a live and let live attitude.Ladd travels to a nearby town and is treated pretty poorly by the locals since he's a Southerner and the Civil War just ended. However, he stumbles into a relationship with Edmond O'Brien--an alcoholic who has a long history of screwing up his life. Ladd is able to help this new friend find a sense of direction and clean up his life, as they both hit on a scheme to build a town in Kansas that will make cattle drives closer AND they won't need to deal with Caruso. Of course, Caruso made it a habit of playing evil jerks in Westerns during the 50s, so it's pretty certain that he won't just sit back and watch as this new cattle town is created. And when he does behave in a naughty fashion, guess who's the guy to bring justice to this new town? The film is helped by two excellent leads--Ladd and O'Brien. While story elements are often quite familiar here (the tough boss, the hero that is slow to act, John Qualen with his Swede routine, etc.), the film is handled well and is enjoyable throughout.It's interesting that in this film O'Brien plays an alcoholic (a pretty familiar role for him actually, as he played this type character in several films) but in reality Alan Ladd was destroying himself with alcohol. He looks pretty lean in the film, but in subsequent films he became puffy and sometimes slurred his lines. It's really sad to see when you are a fan--fortunately, there isn't much evidence of this decline in THE BIG LAND.

Nazi_Fighter_David Director Gordon Douglas, one of Warners' more versatile directors, teamed previously Ladd on 'The Iron Mistress', 'McConnell Story' and 'Santiago'...Alan Ladd has the familiar assignment of a man of action who has seen enough of killing in the late war... He brings it off in his smoothest style...Here, he is a six-shooter with no alternative, in a tale about cattlemen and wheat growers, who join forces in building a railroad near their land in an attempt to crush the activities of ruthless cattle-buyers... Ladd is forced to take action against Anthony Caruso and his henchman before settling down to marry the lovely Mayo and rebuild the new town...Virginia Mayo gives the film its few moments of sensitivity in the scene where she takes out on Ladd her grief over her brother's execution...Edmond O'Brien is cast as an educated man turned alcoholic... He is a wanderer disgusted by his cowardice, and gunned down when he makes a hopeless attempt to stand up to a heavy, bad man... Despite a few pretentious moments, 'The Big Land' is, on the whole, an undistinguished star Western..