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Title: Wellman complicates civic history lesson.
Review: 'Missouri' feels more like a civic lecture than a film; it tries the impossible task of celebrating the American frontier spirit with a newly tolerant approach to Native Americans, who are kindly allowed do more than whoop menacingly. Well some are; this Western is only liberal to those Natives who agree to the white subjugation of their land - those who refuse are murderous, anti-family transgressors.That's what the script says, and the cheerful narration and dazzlingly bright colours seem to confirm it. Us old Western hands know Wild Bill Wellman, though, director of bleak critiques like 'The Ox-Bow Incident'. The chilling climax, therefore, refuses to simplify the tensions between community, family, and the violence needed to protect them, and can be now seen as foreshadowing the complexities of 'The Searchers'.
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