"Buckskin" was a film I really looked forward to seeing. After all, it starred one of my favorite actors, Richard Dix. However, despite having him and several more amazingly good actors, the film turned out to be a real dud. It often made no sense and was a pretty dumb picture.
Dix plays Stephen Bent, a man working to 'railroadize' the west. He is a man looking to the future and knows that progress is inevitable. Mr. Marr (Lee J. Cobb) is an obstructionist and spends the entire movie fighting against the railroads. He makes money hauling goods the old fashioned way and that's good enough for him, by gum! He also has some tough assistants--bruisers who use their fists to enforce Marr's will (Albert Dekker and Max Baer). Then there's Marr's daughter (Jane Wyatt)...a woman who inexplicably has fallen for Bent.
Note I just used the word 'inexplicably'--this is how EVERYONE seems to act in the film. Not only do you have no idea why the woman has fallen for Bent but Marr's tough assistants soon end up working for Bent. And, at the end of the film there's a giant shootout where no one seems to get hurt and suddenly, and for no reason whatsoever, bygones are bygones and suddenly Marr is friends with Bent and even agrees to be on the board for the railroad!!! None of this makes any sense and what you have is a western that makes no sense whatsoever.
By the way, this film is set well before the Civil War and by the way they talk about the newness of the railroads and the trains going a blistering 25 miles per hour, I'd assume the film was set in the 1840s. So why is everyone using revolvers which weren't even available until much later? They should have been using single- shot guns but since none of the movie made any sense, who cares about details like this.
Overall, a pretty dopey film that wastes some decent talent.
