The only reason I finished this movie was that I was waiting for it to get better. At one point I paused it and saw there was only 15 minutes left and was so bored I fast-forwarded through the rest.
I expected one of two things, a movie out to entertain through shock value or an American Epic. I got neither. Therein lies the problem; the movie's scope simply isn't grand enough. With all the drama, betrayal, tragedy, desperation, and heartbreak that occurred during these events you'd think that you'd see some of it on screen. I'm no expert on the Donner Party, but as I understand the trip took months just to get to the point the film starts up. Where it proceeds to tell a small 2 week time frame about the hardships of the people who made an attempt at being rescued.
This could have been a sprawling epic of the American Pioneer days on par with 'Dances with Wolves', yet we only get to see the small group and how hungry they are. That's it. We see nothing of what happened to the 30+ people back at the camp. I heard they had to resort to eating leather clothes and bones boiled so many times over they became brittle and edible, none of that made it into the film. If you cut out all of the establishing shots of snow and trees the movie wouldn't have even been an hour long.
Bottom line, read the Wikipedia article, skip the movie.
