Ulzana's Raid

 

Moviedrome Introduction

Film Details 

Release Date: 1972

Director: Robert Aldrich 

Stars:

Burt Lancaster as Macintosh

Bruce Davison as Lieutenant Garnett DeBuin

Plot Summary

The film opens with the news that Ulzana and a small band of Apache warriors have broken out of the San Carlos Reservation. They embark on a series of raids against isolated homesteads, killing settlers and taking horses. The U.S. Cavalry dispatches a small detachment under the inexperienced Lt. DeBuin to hunt them down.

DeBuin is assigned McIntosh as his scout, along with Ke-Ni-Tay, an Apache who can track Ulzana’s movements. As they follow the raiders, DeBuin witnesses the aftermath of Ulzana’s attacks — brutal killings that often seem needlessly cruel. McIntosh explains that the violence has a strategic and psychological purpose in Apache warfare: breaking the enemy’s spirit and showing dominance.

The journey becomes a harsh lesson for DeBuin in the realities of frontier combat. He begins to shed his naive notions about good and evil, realizing that survival in this landscape means accepting its moral complexities.

Personal History

Unaware of it - and having watched it, cannot imagine it being a typical Western on a Sunday afternoon.

Current Review

We are not dealing with a typical Western here. Case in point - a family on a trail wagon are pursued by the fiendish Apaches. The mother is shot square in the forehead, the father makes a bolt for it, is knocked off his horse, makes for his six shooter and shoots himself in the head. The three Apache's then cut out his heart for a game of catch, whilst look to the dead mother's wedding ring. This is stuck fast. To avoid having the finger cut off, the child wets the mother's finger by sucking it to remove the ring.

Cowboys and Indians? Something rather more sinister and realistic is afoot here.

Burt Lancaster excels as a grizzled old tracker, who is accompanying a rather young and naive cavalry Lieutenant on the hunt for the Apache war party. The Lieutenant is a religious man and believes that we are all god's creatures, created in his image. Burt and the troops have a rather different opinion.

Young vs. Old. Naive vs. Grizzled

More like a war film than a Western, a strange game of cat and mouse carries the film over its nearly two hours. The final plan from the white-man seems rather flawed. All seem consigned to the fate.

There are no happy endings.

Very different. From the director of a Dirty Dozen, I probably should have expected it. It still felt shocking. Not least, there appeared to be a lot of animal cruelty. Poor horses. Can't imagine how it was initially received.

Quirky Facts

Tarantino has said recently on his podcast "the video archive podcast" that he considers this movie his favorite western of the 1970's.

Quotes

Lt. Harry Garnett DeBuin: Well, what's the point, Mr. MacIntosh, if we can't close the gap.
McIntosh: Remember the rules, Lieutenant. The first one to make a mistake gets to buryin' some people.

McIntosh: [Referring to the old Indians he has been interrogating] Half of what they say is lies. The other half ain't true.

Lt. Harry Garnett DeBuin: Would you kill a man like that?
Ke-Ni-Tay: Yes.
Lt. Harry Garnett DeBuin: Why?
Ke-Ni-Tay: To take the power. Each man that die, the man who kill him take his power. Man give up his power when he die. Like fire with heat. Fire that burn long time. Many can have heat.
Lt. Harry Garnett DeBuin: You mean you'd torture a man for hours? And you can get power from watching some poor creature suffering? What kind of power is that?
Ke-Ni-Tay: Here in this land man must have power.

Future Inspiration

Major Dundee looks a shoe in. How could I resist a Peckinpah film, with Richard Harris in it.

Godless already bookmarked in Netflix.

1883 will be on the list, having finished (and loved) Yellowstone.