Now isn't my summary awfully confusing?! How can a somewhat dull film STILL be worth seeing? Well, believe it or not, the problem is that the plot isn't all that compelling but the characters are so well-crafted that the film is still outstanding!! Sure, some of them seem an awful lot like stereotypical clichés--especially John Qualen's performance as a Norwegian, by Yimminy!! In fact, he says "by yimminy" about 60 times during the film--somewhat typical for a Qualen performance in a Ford film, actually!! But apart from this, there are a lot of great characters such as the Yank (Ward Bond), Drisk (Thomas Mitchell) and Smitty (Ian Hunter). The one person in the film I really DID have trouble categorizing is Ole Olsen (John Wayne). It seems Ole is a Swede and I really had trouble seeing Wayne as a Swede!!! Probably this is because since this film he's become so type-cast. I really don't think his accent was that bad--I just kept waiting for John to shoot an Indian or walk with the usual John Wayne walk, but it wasn't to be.