Silver River

By 1948, times had changed for Hollywood legend Errol Flynn. The swashbuckling, high seas adventures just weren't there anymore, and his best roles were behind him. Flynn would continue acting right up until his death in 1959, but after 1945's Objective Burma!, he didn't have another classic (or even near-classic) to his name.  He is one of Hollywood's more interesting stars and personalities, a hard lifestyle taking its toll on him as he died young at just 50 years old.  The movies continued though in the late 1940s and into the 1950s, including one last hurrah with an old directing pal.

The movie is 1948's Silver River, teaming Flynn with frequent collaborator director Raoul Walsh. The actor-director combo worked together often in the 1940s, producing some really solid efforts like They Died With Their Boots on, Northern Pursuit, Desperate Journey, Uncertain Glory, and Objective Burma!  Working together one last time with 'River,' it has all the markings of a big budget 1940s western. The scope and scale is impressive, with money clearly not an issue here.  More than all the little details is something that sets this otherwise ordinary western apart. Flynn plays a bad guy...sort of...kind of.  I'll explain later.

Cashiered out of the U.S. Cavalry for a supposed act of cowardice and treachery at the battle of Gettysburg, Captain Mike McComb (Flynn) heads west looking for a second chance.  With him is Pistol Porter (Tom D'Andrea), another soldier blamed for the act, but before they go west, the duo finds their way into piles and piles of some cash from the army. They plan to head to Nevada where they set up a gambling house, initially tangling with a miner (Bruce Bennett) and his feisty wife, Georgia (Ann Sheridan). Feeling like he's been burned for doing nothing wrong in the past, McComb now doesn't care who gets caught in his path. He starts to build an empire dollar by dollar and business by business.  But has his seemingly limitless power gone too far?

This has all the positives and negatives of a lot of the Flynn westerns I've seen, and more than that (not to pile on Errol Flynn, one of my favorites) 1940s westerns in general.  They're BIG. The sets are large, the musical score loud and obvious, the cast features hundreds of extras in the background along with the requisite big names leading the way, and it's fun to watch if not particularly taxing.  The stories get to be too soapy though, too theatrical. Maybe the biggest thing working against it is that the story -- especially with Silver River -- keep you at a distance. There's no real heart or emotion to the story, and the actors always seem to be playing the same variation of themselves.  With a movie that moves slowly along at 110 minutes, that lack of interest in what happens to characters can be a problem, if you're into that sort of thing. I'm weird that way.

The supporting cast is pretty hit or miss here.  I liked Ann Sheridan working with Flynn in Edge of Darkness, but something doesn't ring true here.  As a love interest, it feels forced, things moving along because the story requires it. She hates Flynn's McComb, then really hates him, despises him...and BAM! She loves him with a passion. Because I sometimes lack a delicate way of saying things, I'll just say it. She's got a dudely factor going on her. Not a tomboy or anything, more like she is a DUDE. The always reliable Thomas Mitchell carries the movie in its slower moments as Plato Beck, a drunken lawyer who becomes McComb's right-hand man. It is basically a fat juicy fastball for Mitchell, playing a character he played in countless other movies. D'Andrea has the thankless part as the humorous sidekick, Bennett is solid but not flashy with Barton MacLane and Monte Blue as McComb's chief rivals, neither making an impression more than 'Hey, cool mustache.'

Enough with all that, let's get to Errol Flynn, the definition of a heroic, swashbuckling adventurer, playing a bad guy. The story isn't quite rags to riches, but it is close if nothing else. The opening is a cool sequence, Flynn's McComb burning a million dollars in U.S. Army payroll rather than let it fall into Confederate hands at Gettysburg in July 1863. He's crucified for it, and kicked out of the army. He feels taken advantage of and starts to look out for No. 1 alone, everyone else be damned.  We're not talking a brutal, vicious bad guy callously shooting down innocent people, but for Flynn, it is most definitely a departure.  People get trampled and left by the wayside because of his actions. As a big fan of Flynn and all the movies I've seen him in, it was fun to see him play against perception, and he looks to be having some fun with it too.

I should have been skeptical though as McComb takes a turn for the legitimately evil department. From his director's chair, Walsh starts tapping the breaks on the old evil speedometer. SPOILERS STOP READING SPOILERS McComb basically gets Bennett's husband character killed and then swoops in on his grieving widow. First, he tries to correct his mistake but fails. If you're making the character bad, just do that. Don't go half-hearted toward it. His rise and fall doesn't come as a surprise, but in the end, he redeems himself because he sees what a jackass he's been.  For a rise and fall from glory story to work, the fall has to be believable.  Think Scarface.  EPIC fall there, and some of that effort would have been good.  Still, it's fun to see Errol Flynn play against type, and that makes the movie watchable on its own.

Silver River <---trailer (1948): ** 1/2 /****