Amazon.com video review:
Gene Wilder takes his most unusual role, a naive 19th-century rabbi sent
from his native Poland to the fledgling Jewish community in San Francisco,
in this warm-hearted comic adventure. The trusting soul is easy prey for
the con men and criminals who prey on the immigrants arriving in the
Philadelphia port and the rabbi, beaten but unbowed, continues his trek
West solo: broke, underequipped, and hopelessly lost. Harrison Ford, fresh
from Star Wars, is the roguish outlaw who adopts the determined
traveler and the two become unlikely friends as they make their way through
one scrape after another. Wilder makes a sincere and sympathetic hero, his
faith and courage seeing him through one crisis after another, and
fresh-faced Ford makes an endearing scamp of a bank robber. The meandering
adventure, overlong at two hours, takes its time as the duo traverses the
gorgeous American countryside and end up in the bustling Barbary Coast San
Francisco of the Gold Rush era. Legendary hard-edged action director Robert
Aldrich (Kiss Me Deadly, The Dirty Dozen) brings a gentle
touch and easygoing humor to this family-oriented adventure, but old
habits die hard. While staying within PG parameters, Aldrich adds a little
grit to the Old West fistfights and gunfights. --Sean Axmaker
