LogFAQs > #956788375

Poke: This was an epic that spanned a number of years for the characters. I was invested in the characters and their motives. I really, really wanted Johns character to find his niece. Every time it seemed like there was hope, it was dashed, only to renew again. Quit playing with my emotions! Wonderfully shot film.

Johnbobb: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1Eo6eJqFLRMBs4HpGu2fcReH1E3-uOxzw9H1FK8BkPFo/edit?usp=sharing

CoolCly: This is another movie where I thought the premise was good but didnt enjoy watching it play out. The initial chase where they try to recover both girls but end up finding one has been killed was good. Theres a sense of desperation and anger. It kinda felt like they let that one guy run into his death a little too easily, but I suppose thats fine.
After that, I didnt really feel any strong thrust to the plot. A lot of ambling around, and the part with the Indian wife felt very strange, especially since it doesnt seem like they would have respected it.

The interesting angle is that the uncle is super competent but very Comanche hating, and the adopted brother was worried hed kill the girl if she becomes naturalized to the Comanche.
When they finally find her, she says shes one of them now and refuses to leave. Uncle tries to kill her and brother gets in the way. Next time, she happily comes with and Uncle seems like hell kill her but doesnt.. Happily ever after.
This didnt feel like it was resolved in any satisfying way. The girl and the uncle both just flipped positions because the point in the plot required them to. Very disappointing.
Generally, I think native americans were portrayed extremely poorly here.

3.6/10

Inviso: This movie was far too long given how winding and meandering its plot ends up being. Were introduced to John Waynes character as this like, misanthropic Confederate soldier returning home from multiple wars, and we barely get enough home life to explain his family being attacked and killed by Comanches. Thats all fine. Its a good inciting incident. But the problem is that the movie cannot settle on a tone. John Wayne and his nephew (and a third guy who dies relatively quickly) go out searching for the tribe that attacked their homestead, along with two kidnapped daughters, and the rest of the movie is an at LEAST five-year journey searching for the younger of the two girls. Theres a weird, comic relief bald guy. Theres a subplot about the nephew getting married off to a squaw (which goes from comedic to tragic as shes gunned down by soldiers soon after). Theres a bizarre subplot about the nephews love interest marrying someone else, leading to a dust-up upon the nephew returning home just in time for her wedding. And ultimately, the payoff to all of this disjointed plot is rescuing the one surviving daughter (after a brief instance of her renouncing her whiteness to live as a Comanche), but it just feels like such a weird plot that I didnt find myself enjoying throughout the film.

Karo: A pioneer settlement comes under attack by indian raiders, which causes them to send their youngest daughter off wandering into the wilderness because I guess they expect an 8 year old girl to be able to outwit dozens of native trackers or something. So of course she is kidnapped by the brutal Comanche war chief... Scar, who oddly enough is a white man in some really bad native cosplay but nobody seems to notice.
So this trio of cowboy dudes sets off on a journey to recover and/or kill the missing girl, with some stops along the way for a spot of spousal abuse and some casual desecration of indian burial grounds.
What should have been a story focused on the search instead is bogged down in to a mess of inconsequential subplots, unfunny comic relief characters, and random jumps through time without warning.
The film is dated beyond the threshold of pain and the characters act so inconstant it is hard to see them as real human beings. Ethan goes from concerned uncle to homicidal maniac and back again with no explanation. Debbie wants to stay with 'her people' until suddenly she wants to come home again. I have no idea what is going on with Martin, except to speculate maybe he was dropped on his head as a child.
Horses are riden. Indians are massacred. The camera is panned through picturesque desert vistas. Two hours of my life is wasted.
There is no reason to ever watch this piece of drek unless you are some kind of lead paint ingesting redneck who wants to cheer 'USA! USA!' to John Wayne shooting up some 'injuns' as you chug down moonshine and have sex with your sister.

KBM: I guess it was interesting to see Jeffrey Hunter in something other than the original Star Trek pilot as the original Captain Pike. This is one, though, where the racism really overwhelms everything else for me. Reading up on the making of the film, I guess they were TRYING to be even-handed, by '50s standards, but despite some beautiful landscape photography, this one's just dated as all hell and features both John Wayne at his most unlikable and John Ford at his most typically slow-paced and politically regressive.
---

Bear Bro
The Empire of Silence