I've never seen this movie but I've always been fascinated by the story it was based on. I just noticed that Wop May, the bush pilot that helped out the RCMP, isn't listed as a character in the movie. Did they leave him out? He's such an important character in the story!
shareWop May was an innovative hero in the real story but was not portrayed in a positive light in the movie. Apparently out of respect, they renamed his character "Captain Hank Tucker, RCAF", played by Scott Hylands, so his memory would not be sullied.
shareHow was he portrayed? I don't know much about the real Wop May but he always seemed like a good guy. Was he really not? If not, why did they make him bad?
shareIt would have been more respectful to rename ALL the characters, and not pretend that this was even close to being a true story. I'm not saying it has to be true to be great - I have no problem with fiction - but they shouldn't have kept the real names if they were going to change the story this much. Seriously, portraying Johnson sympathetically, and Millen being sympathetic, etc., etc.? Albert Johnson murdered Edgar Millen and shot at least two more - and he was not cornered into it. anyway, my point is that it's not like it's just Wop May that they got wrong. They made no effort to get anyone right. So why pretend it's a true story?
DrivingBear
p.s. I learned all about this story as I was working at a hotel in the Yukon this summer, the closest settlement to where Johnson was shot. The bar of the Hotel ("The Millen Lounge" incidentally) is full of pictures about the chase, etc.
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Let it go. They probably got the wrong name for the third guy on the right in the bar, too. These things happen in the movies. He was probably replaced by the arrogant officer to illustrate the point that the old days were disappearing in the Yukon.
Honestly, do you even care about this?
Yes, we do care, that's why we call them heroes. Pardon the lecture but Wop May played an important role in the pursuit of the real Albert Johnson and his participation marked the first time that aircraft had been used in the pursuit of a fugitive from justice. He also risked his life every day along with the Mounties and is credited with having been the one to locate him at the end of the ordeal. He also evacuated a critically wounded Mountie from the field and got him to a doctor in time to save the guy's life. He was also a decorated WW1 veteran and a national legend before the manhunt even took place, people from Canada were outraged by the portrayal in the film of not only Wop May but Edgar Millen, who was a young professional career law enforcement officer gunned down in his prime more or less in cold blood by a fugitive who spoke not one word to his pursuers, who desperately tried to bring him in peacefully. Albert Johnson did some amazing things but he was a criminal who had shot people without provocation, the film does a marvelous job of portraying Bronson's character in a sympathetic light at the expense of history. Which in this case is even more remarkable than the fiction created.
shareIt's just as well they left Wop May's name out of this fictionalized retelling of a manhunt in the North. My father pioneered in the Peace River country, and always maintained that Wop May was a true Canadian hero, and a bush pilot of unequalled courage and skill, which would be confirmed by anyone familiar with Canadian aviation history. The movie makes for one ripping good yarn, although it falls a lightyear or two short of the actual story. Johnson/Bronson was one badass mutha that needed to be brought to justice.
shareThis movie was about the end of a frontier and the ushering in of a new age, not about the actual Albert Johnson manhunt. This was no more a history of actual events than "The Wild Bunch" was a documentary of the Mexican Revolution.
The pilot served as a metaphor for the encroachment of a new world that Lee Marvin's character resisted. Unfortunately, Wop May's contribution was left out in making this point.
The poster who suggested that the CBC make a documentary was on the right track. A documentary listing out the details and getting the names of all of the players in the actual drama has its place and should be made. But in this movie, anything that got in the way of Charles Bronson and Lee Marvin would have been clutter. I think the film you had in mind would have been interesting, but not likely as well remembered twenty-seven years later.