September Dawn
Studio: Slowhand Cinema
Rated: R
Cast: Jon Voight, Trent Ford
Director: Christopher Cain
WorkNameSort: September Dawn
Our Rating: 1.00
September Dawn tells the story of the events leading up to the morning of Sept. 11, 1857, when Brigham Young allegedly ordered a group of Mormons to savagely butcher a Gentile wagon train, an event later known as the Mountain Meadows Massacre. The integrity of this infamous historical conspiracy is quickly clouded by embarrassing dialogue delivered by the numerous forgettable characters, led by Jon Voight in a truly laughable performance as the bishop of the Mormon colony. A love story between a Mormon boy (Trent Ford) and Gentile girl (Tamara Hope) somehow becomes the backbone of the film, causing the actual story and explanation of the massacre to become lost till the final few minutes of the film. As if that weren’t enough, the jarring MTV-style filmmaking is so distracting and the ‘messagingâ?� so unsubtle that after two long hours you find yourself leaving the theater with a massive headache, wondering when you started to hate Mormons.
This article appears in Aug 22-28, 2007.