The Great K & A Train Robbery

Contrary to the IMDb rating and its reputation, this movie is very good. If you are a fan of westerns but are tired of all the talking and waiting, of endless meaningful glances and a meditative rhythm and you want some ACTION, get this film! This is one of the best action films of all time, with some exemplary stunt work. The storyline is easy to follow, but without any plot holes as has become a standard nowadays. Tom Mix is a great Cowboy and fits the character he is portraying wonderfully. Don't get me wrong, I love Douglas Fairbanks, and admire his artistry, but besides his greater charm, he is nowhere as good as Tom Mix in this film. This is meant as an invitation to all Fairbanks' fans, because this will be exactly their kind of film. At 53 minutes, the film never drags and does what it set out to do almost perfectly. If only more films where this modest.

I am not a fan of silent movies and I didn't know this was a silent film when I started watching. But... it got me from the start. Tom Mix was 46 when he made this film and he did his own stunts! The opening stunt with the ropes over the raging river got me into the film. His horse " Tony " is really good. How did they get him to go across a rope bridge? Apparently Mix rode Tony for many years. The story is predictable but well done as well. The train scenes are fun to watch and although there are some scenes which seem to me over acted I found it a really enjoyable film. It is also interesting to see the furnishings of the railway cars and the steam engines, which are so obviously authentic for their time. It's a duster, not a great movie, but fun to watch. Hope you enjoy it as much as I did. There are so many little things of interest throughout the film which give one a glimpse of what life was like - way back when.

The story isn't much, but at a brisk 53 minutes you could do a lot worse. Some of the photography is actually quite stunning and impressive, and there's some good stunt work too. Sad to say the comedy relief from Curtis McHenry is particularly offensive to modern viewers, which may go some way to explaining this film's obscurity.

"The Great K & A Train Robbery" is a Tom Mix movie I saw because apparently John Wayne was an extra in the film, but blink twice and you'll miss him. Well, this didn't matter very much because the film was still VERY exciting...even if it is silent.

Tom Mix plays a bandit in this film, though in reality he's a private detective hired to find out who is responsible for some robberies on his trains. It soon becomes apparent that the boss' private secretary is behind all this...but proviing it is a serious problem.

The film has tons of stunts (apparently performed by Mix himsefl) and is very exciting to watch. So, while the plot is simple, the execution clearly isn't. One of the best silent westerns I've seen...and well worth seeing.

Great K&A Train Robbery, The (1926)

*** 1/2 (out of 4)

The K&A Train Company are being robbed left and right so the president hires a detective but he thinks the guy has chickened out. It turns out that the detective (Tom Mix) is actually on the case but hiding his identity because he knows that it's the president's secretary who is tipping off the bad guys. Now the detective must try and not only stop the bad guys but find a way to make sure the latest gold delivery gets to the bank. If you've ever seen a movie serial then you know the final three or four minutes is where the film really comes to life as the action picks up and it leads to a tense cliffhanger. That's pretty much what this film is as it runs just over an hour and for the most part it's just one action packed scene right after another and I couldn't help but think of the final minutes of a serial but here those exciting final minutes lasts the entire running time. It's easy to see why this movie was so popular back in the day because it features Mix doing everything he was loved for and at a pace probably a lot faster than most people had ever witnessed. Many reviewers mention how fast this movie is and it is rather amazing to see how much they packed into such a short time. The opening sequence runs twenty-minutes as the train is on the way, the robbery are set up and ready to go and then we see Mix who is hanging off a cliff waiting for his time to shine. This sequence runs twenty-minutes and features a build-up, the action and then the pay off. This is a tremendous sequence that contains so much action and drama that the middle portion of the film somewhat feels slow in comparison and yet it's still ten times faster than your typical Western. This earliest sequence certainly makes the film one of the most memorable Westerns of the silent era. There's a stunt where Mix (probably his double) goes from one cliff and has to ride down the rope to a horse waiting on the ground. This looks incredible and is just one example of why stunts in the silents were so dangerous but at the same so amazing to watch. Mix, needless to say, fits the role of the good cowboy without any problems and delivers another winning performance. Tony, his horse, is also in good form and gets to do a couple stunts himself. Dorothy Dwan plays the love interest, Will Walling her father and Carl Miller plays the snake informant. Apparently a young John Wayne is also in the cast but I couldn't spot him. THE GREAT K&A TRAIN ROBBERY was legendary in its day but it seems to have been forgotten by many today, which is a real shame because silent fans will certainly eat this up but the thing is so fast and action-packed that I can't help but think many others would get a kick out of it.