Movie Review for September Dawn

Summary: A love story set against the 19th century massacre of a wagon train of settlers in Utah at the hands of a Mormon group.

                         Reviews of September Dawn
By Phil Villarreal of Arizona Daily Star (7/0)
            A stirring love story that dabbles uncomfortably close to hate.

By Philip Martin of Arkansas Democrat-Gazette (7/0)
            While we should always be suspect of history served up with popcorn, this is a story worth tellin...

By Marjorie Baumgarten of Austin Chronicle (7/0)
            Muddled, sloppy, and obfuscating.

By Chris Kaltenbach of Baltimore Sun (7/0)
            Such ham-fisted earnestness does no one any good, least of all those who believe there's a big di...

By Ty Burr of Boston Globe (7/0)
            ...made-for-TV historical treacle that has somehow found its way to the big screen...

By Roger Ebert of Chicago Sun-Times (7/0)
            What a strange, confused, unpleasant movie this is.

                         Reviews of September Dawn
By Cole Smithey of ColeSmithey.com (7/0)
            The director's overreaching attempts at social commentary with hackneyed devices weaken the verac...

By Jeffrey M. Anderson of Combustible Celluloid (7/0)
            If the Western genre is struggling, it's because of terrible movies like this one.

By Boo Allen of Denton Record Chronicle (TX) (7/0)
            The film Mitt Romney does not want you to see. And it's easy to see why.

By Brian Orndorf of eFilmCritic.com (7/0)
            Cain has turned the Mormons into baby-eatin' Nazis to suit his argument, parading around these bl...

By Dan Lybarger of eFilmCritic.com (7/0)
            Cain has co-written and directed a film that only the most bigoted of Mormom detractors could enj...

By Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly (7/0)
            ...a plodding and highly questionable history lesson...

                         Reviews of September Dawn
By Eric D. Snider of EricDSnider.com (7/0)
            An asinine chunk of Mormonsploitation that mixes historical fact with fictional romance and bald-...

By Frank Lovece of Film Journal International (7/0)
            When the movie isn't doling out ham-fisted history...it gives us magnificent vistas of a pristine...

By Lisa Johnson of FilmStew.com (7/0)
            For all its cinematic weaknesses, I left the theatre weeping. “Now you know how I feel when I see...

By Luke Sader of Hollywood Reporter (7/0)
            [The film] too often feels like a very elaborate episode of Gunsmoke.

By Bob Strauss of Los Angeles Daily News (7/0)
            Even if Cain and co-screenwriter Carole Whang Schutter hold no animosity toward the LDS, the flat...

By Pete Hammond of Maxim (7/0)
            Often gripping and fascinating, it's bound to create waves of controversy.

                         Reviews of September Dawn
By Dave Tianen of Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (7/0)
            If September Dawn is a kind of Western, it's a Western utterly devoid of heroism or the usual arc...

By Colin Covert of Minneapolis Star Tribune (7/0)
            The film feels less like historical drama than a venomous religious tract printed on celluloid.

By Ken Hanke of Mountain Xpress (Asheville, NC) (7/0)
            It's a toss-up as to whether September Dawn is more offensive as history, as allegory or simply a...

By Michael Dequina of Mr. Brown's Movies (7/0)
            Contriving a faux Romeo and Juliet romance as a point of entry for the audience shows how unimagi...

By Jack Mathews of New York Daily News (7/0)
            Disturbingly awful.

By Kyle Smith of New York Post (7/0)
            Voight spends the movie glaring and cursing and heaving his arms in the air as if to signal a mir...

                         Reviews of September Dawn
By Matt Zoller Seitz of New York Times (7/0)
            The maudlin, grotesque western September Dawn apes Schindler’s List in hopes of creatinga Christi...

By Matt Zoller Seitz of New York Times (7/0)
            ...maudlin, grotesque...

By Kam Williams of NewsBlaze (7/0)
            Doesn't even measure up to an episode of your typical, cowboy TV show from the Fifties like Roy R...

By Frank Swietek of One Guy's Opinion (7/0)
            Has serious problems in historical terms. But in this case they're exacerbated by the simple ine...

By Steven Hyden of Onion AV Club (7/0)
            With its complete lack of empathy for early Mormons and simplistic rendering of historical figure...

By Brett Register of Orlando Weekly (7/0)
            The jarring MTV-style filmmaking is so distracting and the 'messaging' so unsubtle that after two...

                         Reviews of September Dawn
By Linda Cook of Quad City Times (Davenport, IA) (7/0)
            There was another 9/11 horror. But it happened 150 years ago.

By Timothy Knight of Reel.com (7/0)
            What could have been a galvanizing and all-too timely account of religious fanaticism turning vio...

By Donald J. Levit of ReelTalk Movie Reviews (7/0)
            Less verifiable than implied, 'September Dawn' nevertheless does raise relevant questions of into...

By Sean Means of Salt Lake Tribune (7/0)
            When watching the screen depiction of a historic event in which 120 people were murdered, gigglin...

By Bill White of Seattle Post-Intelligencer (7/0)
            Sappy direction mars September Dawn.

By Ted Fry of Seattle Times (7/0)
            Religious and thematic issues aside, September Dawn is well-crafted as a revisionist Western with...

                         Reviews of September Dawn
By Nick Schager of Slant Magazine (7/0)
            Forget Grindhouse. September Dawn is the year's first honest-to-goodness exploitation flick.

By Justin Chang of Variety (7/0)
            This handsome indie Western damningly recounts the 1857 slayings of 120 settlers passing through ...

By J. Hoberman of Village Voice (7/0)
            September Dawn has the ham-fisted lyricism of political ads and pharmaceutical commercials.

By Desson Thomson of Washington Post (7/0)
            Even if one gets past the movie's controversial depictions, there is the matter of its second-rat...

By Richard Nilsen of Arizona Republic (6/1) No reference
            The real problem is that September Dawn isn't a very good movie. It moves too much like a public-...

By Wade Major of Boxoffice Magazine (6/1) No reference
            An already thin veneer of historical truth wears off fairly quickly in this surprisingly dull and...

                         Reviews of September Dawn
By Jeff Vice of Deseret News, Salt Lake City (6/1) No reference
            The filmmaking here is so incompetent and laughably awful that it recalls the work of schlockmeis...

By Terry Lawson of Detroit Free Press (6/1) No reference
            It turns a complicated story of religious bigotry and paranoia, with visitations from God, self-a...

By Adam Graham of Detroit News (6/1) No reference
            [Director Cain] stops short of calling Osama bin Laden a Mormon sympathizer, but maybe that'll be...

By Mark Olsen of Los Angeles Times (6/1) No reference
            The workmanlike craftsmanship of Cain's filmmaking almost (but never quite) smooths over the ham-...

By Connie Ogle of Miami Herald (6/1) No reference
            With September Dawn, filmmaker Christopher Cain has turned a national tragedy into a teen romance...

By Gene Seymour of Newsday (6/1) No reference
            Bombastic, slow-drying dramatization with lead-weight dialogue and a turgid romantic subplot.

Movie Distributors
Black Diamond Pictures
Slow Hand Releasing

Production Companies
September Dawn Inc
Black Diamond Pictures
Voice Pictures

Movie Studios