| 63 |
TV Guide
Most significant and contrary to the Mormon Church's ongoing position, the film depicts Young as present when the plot is hatched to slaughter the emigrants. Needless to say, this workmanlike but unflinching film won't be playing in Utah anytime soon.
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| 58 |
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
The cruel simplicity of the atrocity is made needlessly chaotic by artless camerawork that swishes rapidly back and forth across the action, to the accompaniment of a syrupy soundtrack.
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| 50 |
The Hollywood Reporter
Cain has crafted a modest picture, filmed in Canada, that too often feels like a very elaborate episode of "Gunsmoke."
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| 50 |
Boston Globe
The movie isn't THAT bad -- it's just made-for-TV historical treacle that has somehow found its way to the big screen (and barely that; if you want to be moved or outraged by the film, you'll have to travel to Danvers or Revere).
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| 50 |
Los Angeles Times
Mark Olsen
A rare case in which one can't help but wish the film were somehow worse than it is, for it would then be easier to dismiss outright. Jon Voight's turn as a fictional local Mormon leader and, in particular, Terence Stamp's performance as Brigham Young have a strange, unnerving conviction about them, and give the film an oddly engaging pull.
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| 40 |
Village Voice
Shot in a style that might be termed Americana gravitas, September Dawn has the ham-fisted lyricism of political ads and pharmaceutical commercials. The schematic script is further burdened with heavy ironies and hackneyed dialogue.
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| 40 |
Variety
The didactic presentation, grim speechifying and tacked-on love story all signify a less-than-healthy regard for the audience's intelligence.
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| 38 |
New York Daily News
September Dawn, written by an evangelical Christian, may be the worst historical drama ever made.
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| 38 |
Miami Herald
Filmmaker Christopher Cain has turned a national tragedy into a teen romance, and not in a grand, entertaining, "Titanic" way.
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| 33 |
Baltimore Sun
A ham-fisted cautionary tale of religious fanaticism that would have been hooted out of even 19th-century theaters as melodrama of the most lurid kind.
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| 30 |
Chicago Reader
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.
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| 30 |
Washington Post
It's a soap opera posing as moral outrage.
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| 25 |
The Onion (A.V. Club)
Steven Hyden
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.
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| 25 |
Entertainment Weekly
The audience gets the message (religious fanaticism: bad), but nothing we see is convincing on its own.
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| 20 |
Austin Chronicle
Muddled, sloppy, and obfuscating.
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| 0 |
New York Post
Succeeds completely at failure; the unified incompetence of its writing, directing and acting suggest a man who manages to be on fire and drowning at the same time, just as the bus runs him over.
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| 0 |
The New York Times
Matt Zoller Seitz
The maudlin, grotesque western September Dawn, about the massacre on Sept. 11, 1857, of about 120 settlers by Mormons (and their Paiute Indian mercenaries), apes "Schindler’s List" in hopes of creating a Christian Holocaust picture.
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| 0 |
Chicago Sun-Times
What a strange, confused, unpleasant movie this is. Two theories have clustered around it: (1) It is anti-Mormon propaganda to muddy the waters around the presidential campaign of Mitt Romney, or (2) it is not about Mormons at all, but an allegory about the 9/11/01 terrorists. Take your choice. The problem with allegories is that you can plug them in anywhere. No doubt the film would have great impact in Darfur.
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