Alan Ladd’s best remembered films for Paramount were black and white noirs; at Warner Bros, where he set up his own shingle, Jaguar, he specialised in CinemaScope actioners in colour.This was his first film effort as producer. (He'd already produced a radio show Box 13). He plays an Indian fighter who is requested by President Grant to try and initiate peace with the Indians.
The film was written and directed by Delmer Daves, who’d enjoyed a big success with sympathetic treatment of Indians in Broken Arrow, so it’s no surprise to see a similar liberal approach here.
It’s not overly liberal, though – there’s a good Indian girl who loves Ladd, but she’s killed off so he can marry a dull white woman (indeed, Ladd never seems interested in the Indian girl); the reverend who preaches peace to the Indians is killed by an Indian; the racist cowboy who stirs up trouble is redeemed, and the Indians go berserk at the end enabling Ladd to kick some righteous butt (although he brings Charles Bronson into trial rather than killing him – is this the moral of the film?). There’s a decent amount of action and Charles Bronson is effective as the hot headed Indian cynical about white men; he has a particularly good scene before being hanged at the end. Elisha Cook Jnr plays a (surprise) coward.
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