Evengyny Thanks for the memories!

Robert Joyner The plot isn't so bad, but the pace of storytelling is too slow which makes people bored. Certain moments are so obvious and unnecessary for the main plot. I would've fast-forwarded those moments if it was an online streaming. The ending looks like implying a sequel, not sure if this movie will get one

Guillelmina The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

Geraldine The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

moonspinner55 A white woman on her way to be married and an army private are the only survivors of a Cheyenne attack on the paymaster's wagon of the U.S. Calvary. She's a Cheyenne sympathizer, having spent two intimate years living with the tribe, and soon learns that Calvary soldiers--including her fiancé--are about to stage a surprise attack on an Indian village. A rocky western, though in many ways a surprisingly standard one, with two protagonists who banter back and forth like a grown-up Tom Sawyer and Becky Thatcher. However, the man-woman dynamics and survival techniques along their episodic journey back to the fort are eventually upstaged by the filmmakers' desire to Make a Statement, one filled with righteous anger. Buffy Sainte-Marie's title song quivers with barely-contained emotion, letting the audience know what it's in for. Screenwriter John Gay, adapting Theodore V. Olsen's book "Arrow in the Sun," is intent on showing history "as it really happened," yet his dialogue covers the basics ("Put into your minds the abominations of these godless barbarians! Murder! Rape! Torture! When you think of your fallen, butchered comrades, ask yourself, 'are we going to give the Cheyenne the same mercy?'"). Gay and director Ralph Nelson want audiences to get riled up, take a stand, raise a fist into the air--and not just on the basis on the much-discussed final massacre on the Natives by the Calvary (Natives, by the way, who were waving a white flag), but on speeches that portend to show what ignorant savages and hypocrites Americans were/are. Their film was probably meant to mirror the Vietnam headlines at the time, but by depicting bloody violence as a means to ending bloody violence, one may find the filmmakers' stance a little shaky (it was produced by sensationalist Joseph E. Levine, after all). Peter Strauss and Candice Bergen aren't a terribly interesting twosome--especially when things turn romantic-- but Bergen doesn't cancel herself out of the trying dramatic circumstances (as she typically did in her early performances). Her heart is in this material--everybody's is, we are to assume--and yet her characterization rings false...and the harder she tries, the worse the results. ** from ****

Edgar Allan Pooh . . . is a Must-See for ALL Americans desiring entertaining insights into Trump World and the Citizens thereof. Anyone exposed to the six months of crazed "Lock Her Up !" chants will recognize the exact same emotion behind those Trump cheers as they witness the ancestors of these same Deplorables gleefully chortling in the guise of U.S. Servicemen beheading Cheyenne toddlers while waving the severed privates of their Daddies (not to mention slicing off Mommy's Mammaries, pictured 106 minutes into the fun of SOLDIER BLUE). Lawyers for Present-Day assault rifle-wielding U.S. Border Guards argued last week to the Supreme Court that it must remain Open Season on Mexicans INSIDE Mexico, stipulating that Real Live foreigners make for much better target practice than paper silhouettes at a shooting range. (Dozens have been murdered already, which number will surely skyrocket, given the shooting platforms of Trump's Towering Wall, observation balloons, and high-flying drones equipped with Hellfire Missiles; however, Mexicans situated in Mexico City on South are safe for the time being from being slain by fire across our "friendly" border). SOLDIER BLUE teaches viewers that "America First!" policies will "Make America Great Again" by continuing to eradicate any lingering remnants of Native Americans. This is why Trump emphasized his Executive Order to bull-doze through Indian Burial Grounds for the purpose of poisoning their remaining water supply with oil spills.

Wuchak Released in 1970 and directed by Ralph Nelson, "Soldier Blue" is a Western starring Peter Strauss and Candice Bergen as a soldier and Native sympathizer, the only two survivors of a cavalry group Massacred by the Cheyenne. As they travel together to get back to the soldier's unit he struggles with his affection for the woman and a revulsion for her anti-US government outlook. Then he sees the awful truth.This controversial Western showcases the atrocities of the US Army against Native Americans wherein the average US Cavalry solder is depicted as a shifty, droop-eyed, unwashed, stupid cracker idiot with flies buzzing around his head. The opening Indian attack is set in order to align the audience's sympathies with Honus (Strauss, the 'Soldier Blue' of the title), so that the viewer travels on the same journey as him, starting by regarding the Indians as murderous barbarians, and ending up forced to confront the idea that maybe his kin are just as barbaric when the occasion is 'right' (or, should I say, wrong).The final massacre is shocking, but hampered by the film's insistence on stacking the deck so completely in terms of depicting the US military as savages dripping with ee-vil. In other words, it loses its impact because it's so overdone.In reality, utterly barbaric attacks applied to both uncivilized Natives and the civilized Europeans, but more so with the former, which is documented. Since the 60s-70s there has been an overemphasis on the injustices committed by the US Army or settlers and we get a handful of examples: Wounded Knee, Bear River and Sand Creek (the latter being what "Soldier Blue" is based on). Yet we never hear the other side of what caused these events nor do we hear of the atrocities of Natives committed against New Americans. For instance, we never hear of the Dakota "War" of 1862 (Santee Sioux went on the war path and murdered between 600-800 white settlers, which constituted the largest death toll inflicted upon American civilians by an enemy force until 9/11), The Ward Massacre, The Nez Perce uprising which killed dozens of settlers in Idaho and Wyoming, and the Massacre at Fort Mims. We never hear of the countless innocent settlers who were murdered by roaming bands of young "warriors": While a chief was signing a peace treaty on the tribe's behalf they were out robbing, raping and murdering.I'm just saying that it's easy to be pro-Native sitting on the comfort of your sofa, but not so much when you and your loved ones are threatened with torture & slaughter.The Europeans wanted the Native's land and resources while the Indians wanted the technology of the Europeans. Both sides used treaties to make peace while still trying to get what they wanted when war was too expensive. Both sides made war when they felt no other option.I love Native American culture, but the whitewashing of Native atrocities and this revisionist history stuff is dishonest and unbalanced. "Soldier Blue" is guilty of this but, as a movie, it's entertaining and its message is necessary in light of all the movies that depict Indians as sub-human savages to be gunned down on the spot.The film runs 114 minutes and was shot in Mexico.GRADE: B

secondtake Soldier Blue (1970)Make no mistake, this is no masterpiece. But it reveals a lot about movies of the period, and about attitudes toward Native Americans and the Wild West. It's not terrible, and in some ways it's so disturbing by the end it makes a rare point. If you like these themes, and can tolerate some awkward and awful social politics you'll get something from it.The whole movie begins with the acting of television (and the director, Ralph Nelson, is mainly a television guy) but it's completely widescreen, bright color, cinema stuff, and it grows into that over time. The star is a surprise, in a way, Candice Bergen, still alive and well and acting fifty years after her debut a few years before this movie. She's known for a range of roles, from a secondary role in "Carnal Knowledge" to the defining "Murphy Brown" for t.v. She plays a tough woman, smarter and stronger than the man she is forced to go through the wilderness with after surviving an Indian attack. And she's way more contemporary than you might expect from other sources and movies of the same period.To be sure, this is a comedy overall. This relieves it of a lot of criticism about its unrealistic tone and pace. But this comic element is layered with a brutality and frankly honest depiction of the time that is valuable. And the way it is filmed, with lots of long lens shots from a far distance zooming in on the main characters, is interesting, too. In all, it's a better film in the details than in the overall effect.If Bergen is kind of wonderful (even if her role is anachronistic), the male lead played by Peter Strauss is strained. He tries to be charming and yet comes off goofy. Yes, this is a comedy, but he lacks some kind of depth that we need to go along with his silliness. Ultimately this is a lighthearted movie, but it also has a surprisingly serious edge which takes two angles. One is the way we see Native Americans. Bergen's open sympathy is clearly where we are meant to side, and it is pitted against the brutality and narrow-mindedness of the calvary.The other is the military aspects, which seem to be a reflection on the U.S. military of the time, 1970—which means Vietnam. The senselessness of the killing and the blind military attitudes seem, at least on the surface, to parallel popular attitudes against American involvement in the Vietnam War. It was common at the time (as now) to use movies to speak to contemporary themes this way. Near the end, the flag is thrown to the ground in disgust and there is a long, truly brutal, and frankly disturbing battle scene.This is not, perhaps, a deeply thought out movie, but there's more going on here than its slim reputation lets on. In a way, the light silliness of the first hour and a half makes the ending all the more horrifying and memorable. Highly disturbing to the point of almost seeming abusive. This is where the freedoms of New Hollywood are trying to still find their footing.See this and be prepared for the last scenes, including the oddly cheerful minute or two before the epilog. Figure it out, maybe, but at least experience it openly.