If you can get past the premise, this is a really good movie. It has all of the elements you could ask for. The cinematography is stunning. After seeing this movie, I started looking at real estate in Banff. There is romance with good and believable chemistry between the leads, well done and believable conflict between Gates and his father in law, humor, commentary on the American West in the form of a moral lecture, and the initial conflict between the two Alpha males that turns to respect and then friendship.
The unlikely star of the movie is really the dog; I don't know if that was intentional or not, but it will make you want to get a dog like that.
My favorite and most disturbing scene is the dream sequence. For better or worse, you can actually see our bloody history with the Indians playing out all over again. That perhaps is the most striking thing about this movie: You can really imagine that perhaps we have not moved forward as a society or culture when it comes to dealing with anything that we do not understand or refuse to learn about.
