20th Century-Fox's Western Union was loosely based on a story by Zane Grey. The basic historical facts behind the connecting of telegraph wires between Omaha and Salt Lake City serve as a backdrop for a fictional story straight out of Manhattan Melodrama. Randolph Scott and Barton MacLane are cast as brothers who pursue wildly divergent paths in adulthood: Scott, an ex-outlaw, goes to work for Western Union, while MacLane remains a criminal, leading a concerted effort to sabotage the telegraph company. The Indians, too often merely villains in films of this nature, are treated with relative sympathy. When they do attack the whites, it is principally because they have been falsely accused of crimes committed by MacLane and his bunch. Western Union was the second Technicolor western effort from director Fritz Lang; the first was the equally popular The Return of Frank James.

Excerpt from B+N located HERE

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"Western Union" (1941) is Lang's second color film. It is a Western about the building of the first trans-continental telegraph line in the USA. This interest in modern high tech mass communication is distinctly Langian. Lang will return to this aspect of the subject, the actual physical building of a communications infrastructure, in a later color film, "American Guerrilla in the Philippines" (1950). These films share several elements in common. Both are non-crime films, a fairly rare occurrence in Lang's career. Both are in color. Both deal with an entire team of people trying to fulfill an idealistic dream, rather than with a single hero. Both are about the building of a high technology communications system. Both have elaborate shots of massed food items. Both take place in the outdoors, and have much beautiful landscape photography.

Excerpt from Mike Grost's review located HERE