This film tries so hard to be a sprawling epic, and it ends up just sprawling. The hero barely registers as a blip on the radar, Barbara Stanwyck turns in a bad impression of a heterosexual heroine, the villain is a cardboard stereotype, and Barry Fitzgerald's character is too saintly to be believable with this thankless script. This western even features a stand-in horse: a photo mounted on cardboard (in one of the first scenes). It never really gets much better than that.
Review of California
