The Montana Kid (1931) Bill Cody, Andy Shuford, Doris Hill, William L. Thorne Movie Review

The Montana Kid (1931)   3/53/53/53/53/5


Doris Hill in The Montana Kid (1931)

Bill and the Kid

With his son returning home Burke (John Elliott) is already celebrating and pretty drunk which is why he ends up losing money at cards with Chuck Larson (William L. Thorne). But not only does Larson cheat Burke out of his ranch, having him sign it over as an IOU he murders him in a supposedly fair gunfight before he even gets to see his son Andy (Andy Shuford). Convinced that Burke was cheated and having taken it upon himself to care for his son Andy, Bill Denton (Bill Cody) sets about robbing Larson to get the money to buy the ranch back for Andy. Unfortunately Bill's act not only makes him an enemy of Larson when he realises what is going on but also finds himself with Marshal Jack Moore (Gordon De Main) to deal with.

Simply put "The Montana Kid" is about as typically looking an early 1930s western you can get with the most memorable aspect of it being the unnatural character portrayals as we have forced laughing and lines delivered in a static nature as if they had just been read off of the script. Not only that we have a scene where Bill tries to sneak around the outside of a house quietly and prances around like a bad guy in a pantomime, I'm still debating whether or not if it is inadvertently funny or plainly terrible.

Anyway aside from the look and the acting the storyline to this did make me smile in its simplicity as we have Bill robbing a crook to pay the crook with their own money to get back what had been stolen. There are some extras of course we have Burke's young son needing a parent, in fact some quite surprising drama involving the kid and of course we have to have a young lady involved in the form and pleasant smile of Marshal Moore's daughter Molly. But all these extra bits are mostly routine as is some of the footage of posses riding which I am sure is stock footage used in a variety of early westerns.

What this all boils down to is that "The Montana Kid" is really little more than just a stereotypical early western which has the unnatural feel to it when it comes to the acting.


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