#ulzanas raid

[michigandrifter]

Burt Lancaster 1913-94

[petty-crush]

“Ulzana‘s Raid”

This is so 70’s and brutal. How many westerns have, in the first fifteen minutes, a souldger blow a woman’s brains out (to avoid rape) and then himself( to deny being tortured to death)?

Let’s not even dwell too deeply on the horn and what happens to that dog

There is a certain beauty in the way director Robert Aldrich captures the scenery of the landscape; even as writer Alan Sharp has the humans torture each other like fire ants.

Burt Lancaster has a role of surprising patience, caution, and dog eared weariness in this film. He is the lead, but almost willfully gives a lot of the actual decisions making to the Apache hunting his former comrades down.

Jorge Luke as the aforementioned Ke-ni-tay, is magnificent. He adds many layers to the character, so we can see his reasons for doing what he does, even if we may disagree as he does it.

I really enjoy the way the film treats Christianity, as it frequently veers into inanity, especially as the white guy grows scared at other white men “acting non-white”.

“They” are supposed to the proud and untouchable, the ever patient. But, away from other eyes and exhaustion setting in, are just as bloodthirsty and corrupt as the people they find beneath them. If they go low, we go lower, you can hear the film say.

It also, to my eyes, says people are what they do, not who they are or born as. That is the true decider of character. An act almost everyone in this landscape resoundingly fails at. If healing is the goal.

I have truly never see a film, or western, that so throughly puts into mind how empty (and virus like) punishment is as a goal. Astounding.

The strength of this film is the pacing of the plot, and the weariness of the visual approach, that we the audience are truly exhausted and looking outward to the plains for some sort of reassurance as the heads continue to roll.

I will also say, I like how the antagonist is dealt with. Surprising but absolutely the right choice. Much like everything in this film.

[saturdayboy]

Three Bullets from The Greenock Kid: The Westerns of Alan Sharp - NeoText

By the time Alan Sharp arrived in Hollywood to begin his screenwriting career at the age of thirty-six, he had already lived a dozen lives.

I wrote a thing about Alan Sharp's cowboy flicks.

[howardhawkshollywoodannex]

To make room for The Revenant (2015). Ulzana’s Raid was deleted from the best 1,001 films in 2016.