User reviews

This move was made in the late 1970's before TS achieved fame. So you may see a much slimmer and rougher actor than you may be used to. In my opinion, this is the greatest portrayal of Orrin and Tell Sackett to date. The screenplay remained true to the two novels from which it was taken ("The Daybreakers" and "Sackett"). The portrayal of the times was as authentic as we can hope for without having a camera running in the late 1800's. The supporting actors were so real you could smell the trail dust on them. The screen locations were exactly as I had pictured them in my mind when I read the novels. If you love Louis L'Amour novels and want to see the best that Hollywood has to offer, then take the time to watch this.

This is pretty much standard Western fare with a cattle drive, gold prospecting, town taming and gun play. Sam Elliot, Tom Selleck and Jeff Osterhage play the three Sackett brothers. The oldest one, Tell (Elliot) is the one looking for gold. In the meantime, the other two leave their home in Tennessee and head west, hooking up with a cattle drive. When the cattle are delivered, they head to racially divided Santa Fe to help a beautiful Mexican senorita whose family is threatened by a dishonest businessman.

Much of the strength of this story lies in the supporting cast, including Western veterans Glenn Ford, Ben Johnson, Jack Elam, Slim Pickens and Gene Evans. Ford is Tom Sunday, ramrod of the cattle drive. He and the two younger Sacketts go into business together rounding up stray cattle before taking them to Santa Fe. Then Sunday's relationship with the Sackett boys begins to spiral downward, and when Orrin (Selleck) gets the sheriff job Sunday has his heart set on, a grudge develops that will not abate. Ben Johnson is a hoot as Cap Roundtree. He was going to join in the stray cattle venture, but when he meets up with Tell, his eyes light up with gold fever and off they go to the mountains. Elam, Pickens and Evans are the Bigelows. They aim to get revenge against Tell for the slaying of their brother and this leads to the final confrontation. Elam, with his long handlebar mustache and black garb, including gloves, looks especially menacing.

The Sacketts is not the best Western to come along, but it is always a pleasure to watch those guys who appeared in so many of the bygone classics and have since passed on.

After a deadly encounter that has left two members of a rival clan dead, two brothers by the names of "Orrin Sackett" (Tom Selleck) and "Tyrel Sackett" (Jeff Osterhage) are forced to leave their home in Tennessee and head out west. As luck would have it they join a cattle drive headed by a ramrod named "Tom Sunday" (Glenn Ford) and another veteran cowboy by the name of "Cap Rountree" (Ben Johnson). Within no time the four of them become good friends and when the cattle drive is over they all go into business together and along the way stop off in a small town in Colorado. Meanwhile, their oldest brother "Tell Sackett" (Sam Elliott) has had the unfortunate experience to become involved in a gunfight against a card shark named "Wes Bigelow" (James Gammon) which ends up with Wes dead and Tell having to quit his job as a miner to avoid any further trouble from Wes' brothers who are rumored to be nearby. It's then that Tell arrives in the same town in Colorado where he meets up with his two brothers and their two new colleagues. What none of them realize is that the Bigelow brothers are close behind and have recruited several gunmen to help them in their quest for revenge. Now rather than reveal any more I will just say that this was a very good Western which managed to capture the flavor of the Old West quite well. That said, however, because it is a mini-series the overall running time was quite long and in addition to that there were certain scenes which tended to run on a bit. But even so I found it to be very entertaining and for that reason I have rated it accordingly. Above average.

The best part of the Sacketts is the cast. Including 5 members of the Western Performers Hall of Fame. Sam Elliott ( Tell Sackett), Tom Selleck ( Orrin Sackett), Glenn Ford ( Tom Sunday), Ben Johnson ( Cap) and Jack Elam, so it is fair to say the producers put an effort into casting. The funny thing is though the main character is the youngest brother Tyrel ( Jeff Osterhage), and he is the one who obviously is not well known like the others. I also give the producers credit by casting actual Mexicans Gilbert Roland as Mexicans Don Luis and Ana Alicia as his granddaughter Drusilla. It certainly helps when it comes to the authenticity of the characters. While The Sacketts was well above average, the thing that prevented it from being great was too many open plot lines. I actually went to Wikipedia and found out that Tyrel married Drusilla in the book, and Orrin was definitely not as lucky with the woman he fell for ( Laura) . In the film she ended up in a saloon serving drinks and in the books she married him and tried to have him killed.. if they would have spent more time on Drusilla it would have improved the movie because the Drusilla scenes with Tyrel were some of the strongest in the movie. Anyway, I give it 8/10 stars mostly for the cast.

Hollywood western so often just leave really behind, but this movie is different. The sets, scenery and buildings really added a lot of realism. Also I liked that the riders lead pack horses, got dirty and didn't always run around clean shaved. Riders didn't leave their horses loose but tied them up and ran out of ammunition and had to reload. Again realistic. The plot has a few holes and leaves some questions unanswered but even if you don't get all fired up about the story, just watching for the set designs is worth it. Firearms, saddles, building construction and costumes for the most part were period correct. And for the most part, the named actors rarely used stand-ins. In my younger days, I had the chance to ride with Slim Pickens, and that man could ride!

This is something of a poor man's "Lonesome Dove." The story is a combination of two Louis L'Amour novels and doesn't have the intensity of Larry McMurtrey's aforementioned "Dove," nor the beautiful cinematography.

The best part of "The Sacketts" is the cast, led by some of the best actors to ever play cowboys. I mean, this is worth owning alone just to see Sam Elliott, Tom Selleck, Glenn Ford and Ben Johnson all in the same story. These guys - especially Elliott and Selleck - were always fantastic playing cowboys. Not only that, you get classic stars such as Gilbert Roland, Mercedes McCambridge, Ruth Roman, Jack Elan, Slim Pickens and more ! Wow - impressive.

Being a made-for-TV film, you don't get much profanity or blood and for most of the film, you get two separate stories going on at once. One story features Selleck and Jeff Osterhage as brothers and another as Elliott, as the older brother involved with his own adventures.

Even though I can't compare it favorably to Lonesome Dove, it's still a decent western on its own merits.

....you know, Ben Johnson, Slim Pickens, Jack Elam, Sam Elliot, Shug Fisher, James Gammons, etc etc LQ Jones etc. Episodic kinda nature of the show keeps your interest, esp. when you see Sam Elliot come onto the screen.

Nothing ground breaking, but check it out if you like either L'amour or Tom Selleck at the least.

*** outta ****.

Battle of the moustaches. These two are worth the time to watch. Add in Jeff Osterhage,no moustache BTW, but holds his own with these two. They actually made me think of them being brothers.

The three hour plus two part mini-series was just about the right time that was needed for Louis L'Amour to tell his tale about the Sacketts. His fictional family encompassed a few of his many western novels and the ground covered here is covered in two of his stories.

One brother Sam Elliott has already gone west and now Tom Selleck and Jeff Osterhage have to go west because of a killing of a family member who have a feud going with the Sacketts. Their mother played by Mercedes McCambridge sends the boys off with her blessing and a promise that they'll send for her when they can.

One thing I liked about this film is without being sanctimonious or preachy The Sacketts does manage convey the strong moral values the men were raised with. That slips all too often in the rough and violent west when it could become a dog eat dog matter of survival.

Elliott is involved with prospecting and he runs afoul of a band of brothers named Bigelow when Elliott shoots one of them for being a card cheat. Selleck and Osterhage sign on to a cattle drive that is ramrodded by Glenn Ford who is wise in frontier ways. They settle in Santa Fe where they get caught in the middle of a feud between the new American immigrants led by John Vernon who includes among them a number of gunfighters and Gilbert Roland leader of the Mexican settlers who were there before.

Let's say that the brothers help each other out in their different situations.

A lot of familiar western names support Selleck, Elliott, and Osterhage and it's always a pleasure to see any one of them in a film. Ben Johnson plays another grizzled veteran of the frontier. Glenn Ford's character is probably the most morally ambiguous of the lot and in his long career Ford did play a few people who were not heroes, Lust For Gold and The Man From Colorado come immediately to mind. And Mercedes McCambridge's few scenes at the beginning are memorable.

Fans of Louis L'Amour novels and western fans in general will enjoy The Sacketts

Very good western that includes action, suspense, romance, and persons interactions. Worthy of a watch or two. Take the ride along.

What's not to love when you have Sam Elliot and Tom Selleck in this old western min-series. Throw in a good classic plot and you have a good movie on hands.

I wanted to like this movie, but I only found it fair. Nothing new here in regards to a Western film. While the story concept was passable, the dialogue was mediocre at best, except for a few fleeting moments. Glenn Ford stood out briefly, but then overplayed his role and his death scene was way over the top and it was clear as day that a stunt man did the falls for the over 60 Ford. Most of the cast was wooden, stiff and either underplayed or overplayed their parts. Of course this was a television movie and for that, it was entertaining enough on a rainy night or a night with nothing much to do. Like I said, nothing new here.

A good solid western story thanks to Louis L'Amour really two stories The Daybreakers and Sackett. Tom Selleck, Sam Elliott, Ben Johnson, Glenn Ford, Jack Elam, Slim Pickens, and Newly (Buck Taylor) from Gunsmoke, heck yes I am all in.

Trying to merge two books into one miniseries I think led to most of the problems. What I found remarkable was how authentic the costumes were and how believable the construction of the town of Purgatory was. Most westerns have the characters running around in their Sunday go to meeting clothes 7 days a week with never a smudge on the clothes or the people. This one was a LOT more true to what I think it would really have been like. I suspect this was from Louis L'Amour input. He is famous for the authentic settings in his books. It is a pity we dont have more westerns of this caliber. Then again it is hard to find an author that does as much good research.

Possibly one of the last westerns made when the story was more important than the special effects.

Based on Louis L'Amour's "The Daybreakers" and "Sackett", there are a few revisions for expedience sake, but a good movie with some notable quotes.

It's hard to not like Ben Johnson playing an old man. He is one of several real cowboys in the show.

The good guys do what needs done, even giving the bad guys time to rethink their choices.

It does run a bit long, the vhs was 2 cassettes, but it was a 2 part tv movie.

If you like the characters, the L'Amour Sackett series is probably up your alley.

This COULD have been a very good film. Nice, strong themes running thru it, but none are really developed. Great cast, but it suffers from very weak direction and gaffs that are simply too serious to ignore.

Let's list just a few of the glaring mistakes in the film.

1) When the two younger Sacketts are traveling from Texas toward Santa Fe in the first part of the two part series, they are shown amid lots of saguaro cactus. Problem with this is that the saguaro cactus ONLY grows in the Sonoran desert, which is in Arizona, extreme southeast California and the northwest part of Mexico right below Arizona. No such cactus grown in Texas or in NE New Mexico where they were supposed to have been at the time. ANYONE spending any time in Arizona would know this, and anyone in New Mexico or Texas would know that cactus is not there.

2) The film was set in 1869 and the year or two before, but the rifles most of the men used in the film were Winchester repeating rifles that were not produced until 1870 and later. But that was a small error compared to the fact that the rifle only holds (I believe) 7 cartridges, though the movie had some of the characters firing about 15 rounds before needing to reload.

3) The climactic gunfight at the end of the movie is supposed to be set at "daybreak," though the shadows are all over the place, some of them clearly when the sun is on the horizon and then seconds later when the sun is nearly straight overhead and then back to on the horizon and then back to straight overhead.

4) That same climactic gunfight has the three Sackett brothers and a wounded friend facing off against the three Bigelow brothers and four hired gunmen... but the Sacketts kill eight of them. Only seven bad guys there, but the Sacketts kill eight.

Now, none of those errors are so serious as to destroy the film if the movie had otherwise been well-made and story lines developed and themes worked within it... but they were not. A terrible waste of some excellent acting talent.

I really felt sorry for some of the classic western actors who ended up participating in this drivel. The whole thing seemed like it was written, directed and edited by a bunch of eighth-graders! It also seemed that it might have been severely edited to reduce the running time, and if that's the case, my criticism might be bit too harsh. Was this perhaps originally a 6-hour movie that was cut down to 4 hours?

I can't believe that, at the time this is being written, that IMDb readers have given this an average rating of 7.5. I'm giving it a 1 in hopes that others will too to keep serious movie-watchers from wasting four hours of their time as I did last night.

The cast was good, if not great, and the story was kind of there, but the dialog was so jarringly bad that I couldn't really get into it. Louis L'Amour's monologue voice-over was the only decent spoken part in the entire first installment.

"Ma Sackett" was very badly played by Mercedes McCambridge, so badly that I was expecting her to burst into laughter at her own performance. Tom Selleck played himself, as usual. He didn't really learn to play a character until he was in his 50s, and this was too early to expect anything much from him.

Jeff Osterhage is who, exactly? I don't remem ber ever hearing of him, but then I was drunk for most of the '70s, so maybe he was a name brand actor around that time.

Sam Elliot turned in his usual competent performance, even toting around that big staghorn handled bowie knife that he carried in several roles in the westerns he did back then..

Ben Johnson was the real star of this TV drama. Except for his role and that of a few more, this miniseries mainly serves to remind me of just how bad network TV was, most of the time back when this was made. Never mind that it's much worse nowadays.