AllMovie

One of the great silent screen epics, John Ford's The Iron Horse, about the building of the transcontinental railroad, still packs a wallop today. In fact, there is almost too much of everything: Brave men fighting for the right of settlers to settle despite never-ending Indian attacks; nasty landowners attempting to misdirect the railroad for their own financial gain; more Indian attacks; quaint Irish characters singing quaint Irish songs when not battling the elements and each other; and still more Indian attacks. All of it filmed with John Ford's legendary feel for the land and its people. And in true Ford style, none of the grandeur is allowed to overshadow the human elements. Only in a Ford film will a fallen Indian be mourned by his faithful dog, as happens here. And only Ford would create an astonishing scene such as the one in which the laborers, without missing a beat, continue their arduous job of building the iron trail mere moments after having quelled a bloody raid by the evil Cheyennes. Said Cheyennes are here lead by nasty white landowner "Two-Finger" Deroux, played to the hilt by Fred Kohler, who creates one of the silent era's most despicable villains. (Ford actually plays on Kohler's real-life debility, a birth defect apparently and not the results of a dynamiting accident as has often been claimed.) Later in the film, Kohler and leading man George O'Brien engage in one of those legendary silent screen fist-fights where no holds were barred, filmed and edited for maximum effect. The rest of the cast is equally well-appointed: Madge Bellamy pretty and sometimes feisty as O'Brien's love interest; former ingénue Gladys Hullette quite realistic as a frontier floozy; and Edward Bull the very picture of Abraham Lincoln. Former comedian Cyril Chadwick is at his supercilious best as Bellamy's cowardly fiancé, and J. Farrell McDonald plays one of those irascible, but good-natured Irish types so beloved by Ford, who would later cast Victor McLaglen and older brother Francis Ford in the very same kind of roles. In fact, several scenes featuring McDonald, James Welch, and John B. O'Brien as army veterans turned railroad workers reappear almost verbatim in Ford's famous "Cavalry" trilogy (She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, Fort Apache, and Rio Grande) of the late '40s.