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Rating: No worries, because Mr. Edwin S. Porter takes care of everything. Writing? Production? Direction? All him, inspired by a theatrical show he attended.
On December 1, 1903, this short film just under 12 minutes long was presented to the general public, evidently in black and white and silent, destined to make the history of cinema.
A product of Thomas Edison's film company, already very advanced for the time, due to multiple reasons traceable to the techniques used and the themes.
We are most likely facing the first film of the Western genre and also of the Action genre, paving the way for what will become classic scenes and settings that "cannot be missing" in the former mentioned. I am referring, in particular, to the presence of the train and robbery scenes.
I have already decided not to spoil anything else because the short is easily searchable on YouTube or around the web; however, I want to briefly focus on certain moments that make this film (in)voluntarily at times comedic: when some characters fall victim to dangerous situations, they react in a truly theatrical, very exaggerated way (a must-see!!).
You can notice the use of decidedly avant-garde, unconventional techniques for the time, such as cross-cutting, which allows the visualization of two different places simultaneously (one of the first examples of its use), very frequent camera movements, and on-site recordings, the so-called "on location" (performed with much caution, as you can notice).
Finally, I feel compelled and need to talk about the final scene, as it is not truly part of the plot. It's a very famous scene, imitated on more than one occasion in various films and TV series, even today.
The scene of the bandit shooting at the camera with all the bullets of his Six Shooter (the simple yet effective Six-Shot); the meaning and the real reason for adding this scene is not very clear, but it adds a pinch of mystery and an eerie character to this work.
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