Terence Stamp as Brigham Young (who always wore black and preferred to be looked at from waist level.)
John Voigt as Bishop Jacob Samuelson - fictional creation of Director Christopher Cain. (Apparently he also always wore black and preferred to be looked at from waist level.)-----
Well folks, unfortunately, I'm not in the habit of financially supporting those who are critical of my church. So I haven't seen the movie. But here are some reviews from people who have:
Paul Asay, formerly the religion writer at The Gazette in Colorado Springs.
The Christians in Fancher's caravan are shown with nary a blemish, the Mormons as the blackest of pits. Samuelson, played with relish by Jon Voight, is so nasty that, in the sequel, he'll likely be tying young damsels down to railroad tracks. Brigham Young's villainy has the depth of a sheet of onion paper. Only two Mormon characters—Jonathan and Micah—manage to peer out from beneath the Darth Vader mask Cain places on Mormonism's head: Jonathan is redeemed because he leaves the faith, his virtue incompatible with his family's beliefs; Micah literally crumbles under the weight of blood and duty. The Christians in Fancher's party may ask God to bless the Mormons, but the film bestows no such blessings itself.
Nick Schager: 1 star
Forget Grindhouse. September Dawn is the year's first honest-to-goodness exploitation flick, utilizing its "inspired by true events" yarn about the 1857 Mountain Meadows massacre for tear-jerking, righteous indignation-stoking melodrama. Christopher Cain's portrait of the Utah region's Mormons as insane-in-the-membrane zealots, as well as its depiction of their successful plot to kill (with the help of local Native Americans) 120 immigrants passing through to California, is reportedly based on the official 27-page confession of convicted Mormon John D. Lee. Yet the clunky, heavily skewed means by which this tale is presented is nothing short of egregious, with its Mormon characters demonized with such laughable gusto, and its Christian victims cast in such a holy, noble light, that the project quickly feels less like an attempt at historical truth-telling than like shameless anti-Mormon propaganda.
...
The narrative is given specious modern parallels by the highlighted fact that the massacre took place on September 11th, and its schematic good-vs.-evil structure is fortified by Cain's camera set-ups (low for the wicked Mormons, eye-level for the benevolent immigrants). Also, it's virtually impossible to take seriously a film whose main contentions can be wholly gleaned from its characters' facial hair—of which Voight's bushy arch-villain goatee is surely the cheesiest.
Frank Swietek: D-
Clearly “September Dawn” is constructed as an anti-Mormon diatribe disguised as a historical narrative, with some sappy romantic elements added as a sort of “West Side Story” in chaps. But even if one were appalled by such a concept for a film, he would still have to recognize any technical proficiency exhibited by the result. In this case, however, that’s not necessary, because the movie is a clumsy, amateurish effort.
Richard Nilsen, The Arizona Republic
There will be many who will see September Dawn as an anti-Mormon film. And there's no question that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is portrayed in the film as a cultlike religion of fanatics. Mormons no doubt will feel personally attacked, and they should.
But the filmmakers probably have no anti-LDS agenda, but instead simply use the church as a stand-in for their real enemy - self-righteous certainty as justification for pogrom. Perhaps they feel Mormons are fair game, like lawyers in lawyer jokes or Germans in World War II movies or the ubiquitous "drug kingpins" that function as villains in so many modern action movies.
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As it is, September Dawn is an unfocused botch. What was meant as tragedy sinks to the level of melodrama.
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