They Died with Their Boots On [HD]

A Very Gracious Thing
After "The Adventures of Robin Hood," this is Errol Flynn's best movie. As noted elsewhere, it's worthless as history. But the casting of Flynn as Custer has a resonance that burns up the screen, and behind the romanticism one glimpses a portrait of an unhappy, self-destructive man who is a hero in spite of himself. Flynn's farewell scene with Olivia de Havilland is almost unbearably moving, as if both sensed the real-life parallel and the future awaiting them both. This is a rousing, action-packed movie with just about everything: adventure, comedy and romance... but it's one of the rare ones that also gets under your skin.

I Don't Care
I don't care if the film is historically inaccurate. Errol Flynn may not have been an ideal figure in real life but the movies he was in, well, I was raised with the 30's and 40's films and his films always gave me a hero to look up to and how things should have been done. They inspired me and taught me right from wrong and how to treat people fairly. Along with my Dad's guidelines, I was better for it. That's all I care about, not whether it was historically accurate. Mr. Flynn, even in real life, was a chip off the old block. I love this film. I grew up with it and it still gets an emotional rise out of me when I view it. Its what Custer should have been in my opinion and as a young boy watching this for the first time, influenced me for the rest of my life. Errol Flynn was my hero after I saw this and his WWII Burma movie. Its a shame he's gotten a bad shake from the critics whether now or in the past.

One of Errol Flynn's finest moments on screen
Mammoth is the only way to describe the Raoul Walsh directed tribute to Brig. General George Armstrong Custer, "They Died With Their Boots On". As stated by previous reviewers much of the story as depicted in this film is fiction, but what a story!! It would have to be one of the most entertaining and thoughtfully put together epic productions of this time and th eattention to detail is evident in every frame of this film.

Errol Flynn, at the peak of his career when this film went before the cameras in 1941 had the role of a life time in Custer and indeed he looks remarkably like the illustrations that survive of what Custer actually looked like. Not since the classic "The Adventures Of Robin Hood" had Flynn been handed such a diverse and challenging role as this and once again he proves what a fine actor he could be given proper material to work with. His development from the cocky and raw recruit at West Point through to his fateful encounters with Chief Crazy...

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