Joel McCrea holds this cattle-driving western together competently enough as "Cord", a man who must get his huge herd of cows to market. Problem is, one herd belongs to the citizens of a town that he let his previous crew trash - earning him a five year spell in jail. The other herd is owned by a competitor - so no easy task here for the man. Unusually for the genre, and thankfully here, we have a rather more feisty and independently minded leading lady in the form of "Sandy" (Gloria Talbott) who has just a little of the Barbara Stanwyck about her as the trail progresses. Regrettably, though, the bulk of this film is all a little dull as we watch cows meander around peppered with some rather inane dialogue and some contrived contretemps between his increasingly frustrated team of wranglers and their boss determined not to let history repeat itself. The last ten minutes liven it up a bit, and if you're after a bit of brain fodder for eighty minutes then you could do worse - but the star is well past his best and the drama predictably forgettable.
Review of Cattle Empire
