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Mrs. Smith, I know you said not to do a book report on a movie again, but this movie is just way too good, and I think you’ll agree.
The film opens with Dan Evans, an unsuccessful yogurt farmer, as he tends his yogurt orchard hoping for a lucky harvest to solve his financial problems. A band of ruffians from town, hired by the Cheez-Whiz factory owner, complicate his life (and the plot!) by burning down a few acres of his orchard.
Meanwhile, the legendary Cheese Baron, Ben Wade, is captured by the sheriff of Pelican Lake. He asks for help returning Wade to justice, because Wade’s gang is still on the loose and will surely try to free him. In order to make back his lost money, and convince his son that he’s not a pussy, Dan takes up arms in the sheriff’s posse to take Wade to the 4:15 to Milwaukee, where he will be transported to federal prison and tried for his various cheese-related crimes. The makeshift posse looks no match for Wade’s experienced gang of hardened gastronomes. The posse is just a small group of cream prospectors, cool whip churners, and retired beef inspectors.
4:15 to Milwaukee is a very human piece, about the harsh realities of 19th century Midwestern yogurt farmers. Wade is a more intriguing villain than the tired, archetypical cheese baron. He is more complicated, less flat. Yes, he blows up dairy store vaults and he attacks heavily-defended Federal shipments of gorgonzola, but he has a unique kind of charm about him. It seems the only person who is not subject to his wiles is Dan, who is so obsessed with impressing his son that every time Ben speaks, Dan pistolwhips him.
The climax of the film is intense, as both threads come together at once: Dan’s inability to farm yogurt successfully, and Ben’s cunning persuasive abilities. Add a climactic gunfight in a dairy barn and you’ve got an instant hit.
I quote the stirring passage right before the final fight, with the train to Milwaukee right outside, and the gang in between them and the train.
BEN: You and I are not so different. We’re even in the same business.
DAN: I’m different, because I’m not a jerk-head. You’re in the business of being a jerk-head, and I’m in the business of having a yogurt orchard. I grow yogurt trees.
BEN: Dan, didn’t you know? Yogurt doesn’t grow on trees. You ferment it, it’s a dairy product… like cheese.”
DAN pistolwhips BEN.
Dan, despite himself, cannot stay the doubt in his mind: is that maybe why his trees have never once borne ripe yogurt-fruit? But he dies with the doubt unresolved, because while he’s thinking about it, Ben steals his pistol and shoots him through the groin six times, and he dies of subsequent blood loss. So Dan fails to convince his son that he’s not a pussy, because he is, in fact, a pussy. Great twist!
In conclusion, 4:15 to Milwaukee was a very educational, historically-accurate film about Wisconsin’s wilder days, and I enjoyed every minute. Even at the very end, waiting for the train, when the movie’s minutes took longer than real minutes and I got very bored.
