This movie really left me cold. Usually I can enjoy nearly anything that Randolph Scott is in, but in this case I just can't. Maybe the reason his performance in this film is so uninspired is that he realizes how far from reality this story has strayed. The real Belle Starr was hardly an 'outlaw queen' - she was as ugly as a pig's rear end and about as charming. According to something in the plot, some guy - a military guy or a marshal, I forget which - was so smitten with her that he followed after her. He must have been blind. The problem as I see it is that the woman had a pretty name and a questionable history, so they made her into an 'outlaw queen'. However, if her name had been a reflection on this 'queen's' beauty, she would have been named 'Selma Klagshultz' or maybe 'Ethel Gumpox'. Would they have made this same movie with an 'outlaw queen' who didn't sound like one? They made a movie out of a pretty name, and modified the ugly wearer to suit.
I don't know why they insist on making these stories so romanticized but this was so far from reality it was a joke. If the real story isn't good enough then write something else altogether. The real Belle Starr's story was maybe, just MAYBE good enough to make into a movie, in my opinion, but this movie is just a waste of time and film. If the makers wanted a movie like this, they should have invented a whole character, name and all, and created a story, rather than taking a historical character and turning her into something she was not. Blech.
I don't know why they insist on making these stories so romanticized but this was so far from reality it was a joke. If the real story isn't good enough then write something else altogether. The real Belle Starr's story was maybe, just MAYBE good enough to make into a movie, in my opinion, but this movie is just a waste of time and film. If the makers wanted a movie like this, they should have invented a whole character, name and all, and created a story, rather than taking a historical character and turning her into something she was not. Blech.