La brigade des cow-boys

Journey To Shiloh has several young players in its cast who were either big names on TV already or would attain greatness on the big screen. Playing the seven who are young west Texans who are eager to join up and fight for the Confederacy are James Caan, Michael Sarrazin, Harrison Ford, Jan-Michael Vincent, Don Stroud, and Paul Petersen. A budget would be busted if you tried to get all of them in the same film a decade.

Caan leads the group of them who are bound for Virginia to join General Hood's Texas brigade. But they manage to get as far as Vicksburg where they find the war they're looking for. On the way these kids and they are really kids learn some life lessons. Most don't make it back from the Battle of Shiloh, some don't even get that far.

For one thing they're all from West Texas where the cowboys are and know nothing from slavery. Had they been raised in East Texas they would have been thoroughly familiar with the cotton culture of the Confederacy. They run into slaves trying to be free and slave catchers trying to catch them. Albert Popwell stands out here as a runaway slave.

Paul Petersen is a revelation. He plays a young fast gun with a hair trigger temper. Totally unlike all American Jeff Stone on the Donna Reed Show.

John Doucette plays General Braxton Bragg whose performance does not ring true in terms of what I know of Bragg. In fact the whole ending does not ring true because of the character of Bragg for the film.

Still this is a pretty good film and timely in terms of the Vietnam War and people being disillusioned with war and what it brings.

James Caan is the star of this interesting but far from great movie. Off his role in El Dorado with the Duke & Mitchum I suppose he earned the role as chief Buck. It's a film about the loss of youth and growth into manhood. It's unclear just how experienced Caan is, particularly with the ladies, but clearly he is capable of Caaning his way into the best bed in Shreveport. The love scenes are handled with more romanticism and yes love, than you'd expect in a near B film.

The film does seem to reflect the unhappiness and questioning of the then ongoing Viet Nam war, yet our band of 7 from Texas for the main, soldier on until death accomplishing nothing but filling their duty and being honorable men. They come to question slavery and therefore the basis of the war but aren't able to do anything about it. In that sense the film is believable. I like Caan's performance although not his haircut. He is the strong, silent type but with plenty of charm.

It's his movie and he does alright. A great cast of actors not yet at their peak.

I had the impression that Universal pushed this out in Australia before anywhere else. They had no printing on it and I hadn't heard of the film when it hit the city grind house. The people I saw it with were gobsmacked.

As JOURNEY TO SHILOH rolled on, we kept on seeing things that we hadn't encountered in the thousands of westerns we'd seen run through this system - the gamblers with identical pistols under the table, pointed at the kid, the Southern blacks urging the Confederate troops on and the way the plot gets stuck into fatuity of gung ho youngsters rushing into the military. It took a long while to get from here to BORN ON THE 4TH OF JULY.

It also ran to some nice pieces of dialogue - the saloon hoons telling the kids they should have scraped the meat off their leather jackets.

I thought William Hale was going to be a major player, saw his shorts GRAND CENTRAL MARKET and THE TOWERS and contacted him, learning that the dodgy stock footage was forced on the production by the producer, who Hale thought wanted to impose bogus scale on it.

The bonus is that all those faceless juveniles turned into movie stars and one of them stayed one.

This one surfaced the same time as Wadja's POPIOLI/ ASHES, which also deals with young men going to war. Hale's film was not outclassed.

Journey To Shiloh is a good TV movie for when you're home sick from work; or, can't sleep in the middle of the night. It's a good story and moves quickly (too quickly, really, for it loses a lot of possibilities in character development). Still, the dialogue isn't that cheesy - and you don't feel worse for having watched it.

This movie leaves a lot to be desired by history buffs. As it does not exactly follow the true story of the Battle of Shiloh, Pittsburgh Landing to you real Yankees. But, inspite of that it is an interesting film. It is well worth watching if you enjoy any of the other westerns from this era. It is also worth it to see the actors that are in it before they became big stars. The first time I saw it, I missed the beginning and didn't know who anyone was until the end!