Micitype Pretty Good

Platicsco Good story, Not enough for a whole film

Rosie Searle It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

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.

rogerblake-281-718819 Samuel Fuller's near masterpiece.The film starts on Palm Sunday 1865 at Appomattox.Confederate Private O'Meara shoots down a mounted Union officer.While rifling through his pockets O'Meara realises he is still alive.In an act of mercy he takes him to a Confederate dressing station.Close by General Lee is surrendering to General Grant.O'Meara is about to shoot Grant when the surgeon tells him he had better shoot Lee as well because the shame would kill him.He then hands O'Meara the bullet he has extracted from the wounded officer telling him it is the last bullet fired in this war (historically incorrect).Back home his friend has the bullet remade and presents it to O'Meara. O'Meara is an unreconstructed Rebel and his Mother suggests a rope is the only answer for him. O'Meara played by Rod Steiger sports an accent that can only be described as Hollywood Irish,strangely his mother played by Olive Carey has no trace of an Irish accent at all.He decides to head west where there is no Yankee jurisdiction incidentally riding the horse he has "liberated" from the Union officer.He meets up with an elderly renegade Indian,Walking Coyote,played by J.C.Flippen in a scene stealing cameo,who tells O'Meara that he could have been a chief but he couldn't stand the politics.In five minutes screen time O'Meara learns the Sioux language,tribal history and customs. Unfortunately they are captured by the Sioux led by Crazy Wolf.O'Meara is about to discover another old Sioux custom,that of being skinned alive,when Walking Coyote invokes The Run of the Arrow where you are given an arrows flight start made to run barefoot and then hunted to the death.The Indians agree.Walking Coyote drops dead from a heart attack on the run but O'Meara is made of sterner stuff.He's a hefty fellow but he has a turn of speed that an Olympic champion might envy.This is not far fetched as Confederate infantry men were known for their speed of march,usually barefoot,not for nothing were they known as foot cavalry.He loses his chasers and is rescued by a beautiful Indian maiden called Yellow Moccasin and her young companion Silent Tongue,a dumb Indian boy. Yellow Moccasin takes O'Meara to the Indian village where he informs the chief,Blue Buffalo played by Charles Bronson,that he has survived the run of the arrow which Crazy Wolf begrudgingly confirms.O'Meara is told he will never be harmed by the Sioux.He then collapses with a fever.Yellow Maccasin volunteers to care for him and in a steamy scene (in more ways than one) uses body heat to sweat the fever out of him and also during the process he loses some of his inner demons. A fully fit O'Meara marries Yellow Moccasin adopts Silent Tongue as his son and is accepted into the Sioux nation while remaining a Christian.Blue Buffalo remarks tolerantly "Same God, different name". The U.S.Government want to build a fort on Sioux land so a big meeting is called between Sioux chiefs and U.S.Army officials.The General in charge played by Tim McCoy (in his last film role) humorously remarks to O'Meara that he has never shaken hands with an Irish Sioux before,O'Meara replies he's never shaken hands with a Yankee General either.Terms are agreed on the proviso that the Sioux have a representive to ensure the treaty is kept.Thats O'Meara's job. The officer in command Captain Clark played sympathetically by Brian Keith tells O'Meara that Appomattox was not the death of the South but the birth of the United States and when one of his troopers saves Silent Tongues life at the cost of his own by pulling him out of a swamp he remarks "We Yankees are human".Sadly this is not the case with the second in command played by Ralph Meeker who by coincidence is the same officer that O'Meara shot at the beginning of the film.Is he grateful? is he hell.He's more miffed about his horse.Captain Clark is then killed by renegade Sioux led by Crazy Wolf.Lt.Driscoll now in command and a bit of a glory hunter decides to build the fort in a forbidden area ignoring O'Meara's warning.O'Meara is beaten unconscious.When he comes to the Sioux are attacking,a brilliantly staged bloody scene. Driscoll has been kept alive and is suffering unmentionable tortures being skinned alive.O'Meara,in an act of common decency and using the same bullet shoots him again this time killing him instantly and saying "They had a right to kill him but not like that" He realises he can never truly be a Sioux and that he owes his allegiance to the United States. He,his wife ,his adopted son and the surviving troops are allowed to leave unmolested. The voice over repeats the earlier statement "Appomattox was not the death of the South but the birth of the United States" then a caption comes up which says "The end of this story can only be written by you". O'Meara,funny Irish accent and all is magnificent,he may be a blowhard about Yankee injustice but in reality he is an honourable,decent and humane man.Likewise Blue Buffalo comes across as a religiously tolerant man and you can sense his approval over O'Meara's act of decency. Mixed marriages with happy endings were a rare occurrence in films of the time,eg James Stuart's Indian wife gets killed in the film "Broken Arrow".Indian wives were more likely to be raped and killed by white bigots (off screen) their husbands then seeking bloody revenge.Richard Widmark's film The Last Wagon was a classic example. One hopefully happy ending was in the 1968 film The Undefeated where Rock Hudson's Confederate Colonel's daughter has a relationship with John Wayne's Union Colonel's adopted son a full blooded Indian,with full parental approval.

bkoganbing Among the films giving a realistic and three dimensional portrait of the American Indians this item that stars Rod Steiger is curiously overlooked. Run Of The Arrow is a story about Confederate veteran who goes to live among the Sioux after Appomattox.Like John Wayne's Ethan Edwards from The Searchers, Steiger doesn't believe in surrenders and won't accept the Union victory and domination over the south. But unlike Edwards Steiger's Clay O'Meara has no problem with the Sioux or any other Indians. He goes into their country and after passing a brutal initiation from the Indians with a little bit of help he's accepted into the tribe.Eventually the Union blue reaches the Sioux country and Steiger is part of the negotiating team and guides the cavalry to land where they will build a fort safe from Indian hunting grounds. Extremists on both sides make the peace impossible, H.M. Wynant for the Sioux and Lieutenant Ralph Meeker for the whites. Eventually Steiger makes a choice and he faces a most uncertain future.The Indians are nicely played albeit by white players such as Charles Bronson as the chief. Sarita Montiel of the Mexican cinema plays the Indian woman whom Steiger takes in wedlock. Brian Keith has a nice part as a sympathetic army captain. But who I would have liked to see more of are Olive Carey as Steiger's mother and Jay C. Flippen as the philosophical Indian scout who comes back to die among his people. I wish Flippen hadn't died so soon.A certain kind of cosmic justice is meted out to one of the cast at the conclusion. You'll have to sit and enjoy watching Run Of The Arrow to know what I mean.

njmollo If proof was needed that Rod Steiger could be the proverbial ham, then simply watch an early scene from Run of the Arrow (1957) where he talks to his mother about honour. This scene encapsulates everything that was wrong with Steiger as an actor unrestrained by the guiding force of a strong director.Rod Steiger yet again gives us another dodgy accent that sounds like his character spent the American Civil War years vacationing in Pakistan.This is not the first time Steiger has ruined a movie by using his assumed talent for accents. Napoleon comes to mind. I for one, believe Rod Steiger ruined Sergio Leone's Duck, You Sucker (1971) with another irritatingly dodgy accent. Had Eli Wallach been given the role of Juan Miranda as was originally intended, the film could have been regarded as yet another undisputed Leone classic.The problem with Steiger as an actor was that he was uncharismatic. He had no natural charm, so it was hard to empathise with any sympathetic character he played.Rod Steiger's talent was for playing larger than life characters with unpleasant characteristics such as Gilespie in "In the Heat of the Night" (1967) or Komarovsky in "Doctor Zhivago" (1965). Playing a hero and a charming one at that was not within Steigers' range.This film might be the first to use "squibs" but so what? It still used painted-up Caucasians as the featured Indians, so I don't think it was that ahead of its time.This is a terrible movie that becomes unwatchable as soon a Steiger opens his mouth.

Nazi_Fighter_David "Run of the Arrow" has an ex-Civil War soldier taking an Indian wife (Sarita Montiel) and here the Indians are less idealized… Steiger, deserter from the Southern cause, is a highly credible character, tough and able to effect a compromise with the Sioux until he finds one aspect of the culture he can't stomach, let alone assimilate—that of skinning a captive alive… He still, however, rides out of the picture with his Indian wife alongside… Whether she will assimilate what she finds in a different culture remains unanswered… The film remains a bloody little Western in the accustomed Fuller vein of unpleasantness...