September Dawn

Filmmaker Christopher Cain's September Dawn depicts the Mountain Meadows Massacre of 1857—in which a wagon train was almost wiped out while passing through Utah on the way to California—as a straightforward act of malevolence on the part of Mormon settlers under the leadership of Brigham Young. Unfortunately, the production quality is on the level of a mediocre TV movie, with a script that is both highly speculative and risible (particularly in its obtrusive noting of the date of the tragedy as being September 11). Terence Stamp plays Young as a glowering fanatic who orders the massacre and duplicitously covers up his involvement, while Jon Voight as Bishop Samuelson (a fictional figure who lulls the gullible travelers into a false sense of security while planning their murder) vacillates between scenery-chewing and pallid underplaying. To make matters worse, a crackpot Romeo-and-Juliet subplot posits a romance between one of the bishop's sons and the daughter of the kindhearted wagon train preacher. Ultimately, September Dawn is an anti-Mormon diatribe disguised as a historical narrative, with a quasi music-less West Side Story in chaps shoehorned into the middle. Not recommended. [Note: DVD extras include the featurettes “Descendants: Remembering the Tragedy” (11 min.), “True Events: A Historical Perspective” (8 min.), and trailers. Bottom line: a skimpy extras package for a silly film.] (F. Swietek)