The Great Missouri Raid

1951
Approved
1h 24m

IMDb RATING

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Macdonald Carey, Wendell Corey, and Ellen Drew in The Great Missouri Raid (1951)

In this Western, the James and Younger boys ride the outlaw trail again all because of a mean Union Army Major.In this Western, the James and Younger boys ride the outlaw trail again all because of a mean Union Army Major.In this Western, the James and Younger boys ride the outlaw trail again all because of a mean Union Army Major.

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IMDb RATING

5.8/10

315

YOUR RATING

See production info at IMDbPro

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Trivia
Though the film portrays the Jameses sympathetically, and ends with Bob Ford killing Jesse, because the James brothers were criminals themselves, bank robbers and murderers, Ford committed no crime and the film did not run afoul of the Motion Picture Production Code's edict that crimes must always be punished.

Goofs
When one of the James brothers asked the bartender to pour him a beer, the beer glass was completely full of foam but when the bartender slid it down the bar it was full of beer with a slight head.

Connections
Referenced in A Fellow Journeyman: Byron Haskin at Paramount (2022)

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Review

Featured review

6/10

Competent Handling Of Oft-Told Tale

Here's another of the Paramount Shaky A westerns from the 1950s, when B westerns were no longer profitable, but true A westerns were very chancy. So they got Technicolor, another 20 minutes of screen time to tell a story, some actors who could also get hied for non-western work.

This one might be called "The life and death of Jesse James", since the Great Missouri Raid makes up a small bit of it as we watch the whole gang of ex-Quatrill Raiders from the end of the Civil to the death of Jesse, as portrayed by MacDonald Carey. It's not their fault they were villains; no one gave them a chance, particularly nasty old Ward Bond, who pursued them like they had pled the Fifth before HUAC. The writing by Frank Gruber is good, if fanciful; the direction by Gordon Douglas is plebian. Ray Rennahan's camerawork is excellent. That's hardly surprising, since he had been a leading expert on it since the 1920s. The net result is good, although I've seen the story so many times in so many versions that I'm bored by it. When are they making another one about Billy the Kid?