Excerpts from "September Dawn" reviews

Few motion pictures have generated the interest of the Latter-day Saint community like "September Dawn," which was released this weekend. Following are excerpts from reviews by film critics around the United States:

�My opinion is that there isn't anything to be gained in telling this story in this way. It generates bad feelings on all sides, and at a time when Mormons are at pains to explain they are Christians, it underlines the way that these Mormons consider all Christians to be 'gentiles.' The Mormons are presented in no better light than Nazis and Japanese were in Hollywood's World War II films. Wasn't there a more thoughtful and insightful way to consider this historical event? If there is a concealed blessing, it is that the film is so bad. . . . I am trying as hard as I can to imagine the audience for this movie. Every time I make any progress, it scares me.� — Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times

�Lovers often face potential in-law problems, but this one, in the historical setting of the infamous 1857 Mountain Meadows Massacre, is insurmountable. 'September Dawn,' written by an evangelical Christian, may be the worst historical drama ever made. Not because it is about to offend one of the country's fastest growing religions — Mitt Romney, beware — but because in placing a glib romantic fable at its center, it trivializes one of America's ugliest and least understood events.� — Jack Mathews, New York Daily News

�'Inspired' by a dark chapter in American history, 'September Dawn' presents a ham-fisted cautionary tale of religious fanaticism that would have been hooted out of even 19th-century theaters as melodrama of the most lurid kind.� — Chris Kaltenbach, Baltimore Sun

�Even if one gets past the movie's controversial depictions (which are based on historical facts), there is the matter of its second-rate, made-for-television fare — the poor battle choreography, the wooden editing and the cheesy writing, which makes everyone seem ridiculously on-the-nose about their dialogue and their religious beliefs . . . It's a soap opera posing as moral outrage.� — Desson Thomson, Washington Post

"'September Dawn' commemorates the Mountain Meadows Massacre of Sept. 11, 1857, in which a party of Mormon militiamen murdered 120 settlers bound for California. True believers probably won't like it, but the sins here are more against good filmmaking than religion. Can a moviegoer ask for blood atonement along with a ticket refund?� — Ty Burr, Boston Globe