Durango

Durango

This film, set just before World War Two, takes place in rural Ireland and involves a cattle drive from one town to another, with the cattle to be sold at a public square in front of the Durango pub, named after the southwest Colorado town.

Based on a novel by the same name (also excellent), the film portrays Ireland right before it really began to change post war, when the Ireland of our classic imaginations still existed.  Well attuned to Irish life, and from an Irish novel, it's very well done and gives us a look at Ireland in history in a way that no other film does to the same extent, although The Quiet Man is in some ways somewhat comparable.  This film is better.

Like The Quiet Man, but only more effectively, this film incorporates a lot of details of Irish rural life into the film in an effective way.   With the novel having been authored by Irish author John B. Keane, it is perhaps not too surprising that this film would do an overall much better, and subtler, job of incorporating such details.

Included in the historical and material details which are worked effectively into the film, the mixed feelings about the United Kingdom and World War Two are portrayed in the film.  As was intended to be done in The Quiet Man, but which was dropped as that fairly long film was dropped, this film includes a subplot involving the Irish Republican Army (which is also in the book), but which is done in a comedic fashion.  The very local nature of the Irish cattle industry is portrayed in the movie very well, as well as the only partially mechanized nature of the country at that time.

It's a Hallmark film, but it portrays the era and the culture very well.