Platicsco Good story, Not enough for a whole film

CommentsXp Best movie ever!

Kailansorac Clever, believable, and super fun to watch. It totally has replay value.

Abbigail Bush what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

MartinHafer When "Carson City" begins, a stagecoach is being robbed. However, oddly, these bandits have class and treat their 'guests' to a nice picnic lunch complete with champagne! Not surprisingly, they're dubbed the Champagne Bandits and the mine owner whose gold was stolen is furious. He proposes to build a railroad and avoid all this banditry. To help him get the job done, he brings in an engineer/troubleshooter, Jeff Kincaid (Randolph Scott). However, the new railroad is opposed by two forces--the local newspaper that's afraid it will usher in thugs and the guy who is secretly behind all the robberies. Can Jeff manage to get the job done-- especially when the baddies seem willing to do ANYTHING to stop them?This is generally a well made and enjoyable film--which isn't surprising since Scott stars in it. He seemed to always make even the most ordinary material better and this movie is no exception. The complaints I have are relatively minor (such as how dumb Zeke is when he learns who's behind the robberies--way to do Zeke!) and the film is solid and entertaining.By the way, the pretty lady starring in the film is NOT Virginia Mayo but a near lookalike, Lucille Norman.

GManfred Randolph Scott made a lot of westerns, and I guess they can't all be good. This one was more talk than action and had more plot than it needed, but if you are a fan, like I am, Randy can do no wrong. Except maybe pick the wrong movies.This one is pretty formulaic and breaks no new ground for westerns. That being the case there is really no compelling reason to see it. Add on the fact that there is precious little action, save for a couple of fistfights, and you have a disappointing picture worth only a five rating. Raymond Massey was a very good bad guy and Lucille Norman was average as the love interest. Director Andre DeToth must have phoned this one in and as I recall this one was on the bottom of a double feature. It must have been better when I was 11, and that's the only excuse I can give you for watching "Carson City" now, as a grown-up.

tieman64 "Carson City" is a fairly sophisticated B-movie western, starring Randolph Scott and directed with some style by Andre De Toth. The plot concerns the usual business about building railroads and warding off bandits, but the dialogue here is sharp, witty and Toth maintains a rapid-fire pace.Unlike most of these B-movie westerns, "Carson City" eschews the usual western archetypes in favour for some fairly interesting characters. Randolph Scott, for example, plays not another gunslinger (people forget that Scott once was, more so than John Wayne, one of the actors most associated with tall, rugged Western heroes) but a talented engineer and miner more in the vein of Daniel Plainview ("There Will Be Blood"). The rest of Toth's characters are a fairly interesting network of capitalists, builders, engineers, bankers, railwaymen, stagecoach managers, newspapermen, low-income lapdogs, workers, bandits and high-ranking members of various mining cartels. Few of these B movie westerns, or even more prestigious fare of the era, tried to capture such a crisscross of interconnecting relationships.Ending with a train heist and an obligatory happy ending, the film does eventually succumb to its B-movie, crowd-pleasing roots. Indeed, toward the end of the film, Randolph Scott even dumps his engineer's apparel for the black hat, shirt and gun belt that made him such an iconic figure (eg "The Bounty Hunter") during the 60 or so westerns he starred in across his career. At its best, though, the film hints at an intelligence and scope that most of these B-movie Westerns lacked.But what's interesting for me is the presence of a short "Carson City" segment in Stanley Kubrick's "The Shining". Though the segment's audio can't be heard, the snippet in question involves talk and allusions to "punch ups", "bar room brawls", "alcoholism", "jail", "new job interviews" and "newspapers", all of which resonate with moments in "The Shining". Indeed, the characters even mention another called A. Jack Davis, which recalls "The Shining's" Jack Torrance.Filled with intricate rhymes, mirroring patterns and breadcrumbs, "The Shining's" links with "Carson City" don't stop there. Sync "Carson City's" audio with the segment of Toff's film shown in Kubrick's, and weird synchronicities turn up, like characters on the audio answering telephones in Kubrick's film, or the mentioning of A. Jack Davis coinciding with a stack of magazines titled Avis. Visual symmetries abound too, like "Carson City's" on-screen cowboys mirroring a pair of middle management types in Kubrick's film. Then there's the fact that "Carson City" and "The Shining" take place in neighbouring states, and that Jack Torrance spouts Johnny Carson's catchphrase toward the end of the film. Mostly, though, Kubrick's interest in "Carson City" seems to stem from its cocktail of business cartels, social contracts and servant lapdogs ("Carson City" even has a bald, Kubrickean butler of sorts). It's no surprise that "Carson City's" criminals are a classy lot called the "Champagne Bandits". In "The Shining", like the real world, no one sees blood being spilt, and you're far more likely to be robbed – with civility of course - by invisible men and fountain pens.7.5/10 – "Carson City" is a very brisk, witty and at times ambitious western. It was also the first Western released by Warner Brothers in WarnerColor.

krdement Randolph Scott is 1 of 4 or 5 icons of the Western genre (along with Gary Cooper, John Wayne, Jimmy Stewart, possibly Henry Fonda and...?...), and he is always worth the time it takes to watch one of his films. They're not always great, but they are the quintessence of the genre, and his granite-jawed charisma always works.This is one of the better films in the Railway Construction sub-genre. The plot device of the "champagne bandits" is a little comical, but not enough to undermine the film. Raymond Massey, an under-appreciated and versatile actor, delivers a nicely nuanced performance and devises a very good railroad heist. Both his performance and his scheme are well worth your time. It is definitely one of the cleverest railroad robbery schemes ever conceived in a Western, and it is filmed in a way that clearly depicts the various elements of the plan.Of course, Randy wins the day and he also ends up with the girl. However, it is definitely more of a case of her getting him, than Randy getting the girl.