During the American civil war Buster Keaton is turned down from joining the army because he is needed as an engine driver, but his girlfriend Marion Mack thinks he is a coward for not enlisting. When Union soldiers steal his train (The General) with his girldfriend on boad he sets off to recover the train and stop a Union attack on the Confederates. This is Buster Keaton doing more action than comedy but the stunts are good espepcially in the chase scenes on the trains, all the stunts of which he did himself. This is one of Buster Keaton's best films and he is ably assisted by Marion Mack. What also makes this film differnt is the way Keaton looks at the civil war which was only a generation earlier. It showed his amazing directorial talent, but it was not well received by the critics and not popular at the box office. The studio also disliked it because of the cost. The scene where the train goes onto the burning bridge and then crashes into the river was the most single expensive shot in silent films as Buster Keaton had the bridge specially built for the shot and drove a real train off the bridge.
4/5 
Buster Keaton