A really excellent Audie Murphy western - I'm probably overpraising it but it's quality took me by surprise. Come to think of it, I don't know why it should - the more of his films I'm seeing the more I realised he should be better known as an actor (I think it's because (a) too many of the films he made were Westerns and (b) he didn't work with enough famous directors).
This one as Audie as a Texan serving with the Union Army during the Civil War, who deserts in the wake of the Sand Creek Massacre in order to warn his old neighbours that the Indians are coming. They hate him because his conscience made him fight for the Union, so response is slow. Also, all the guys are away fighting so it's mostly all women. But a corpse makes them pick up their pace and soon the action turns into a siege story.
There are lots of entertaining subplots: the women are an interesting combination of dance hall girls, Christians, former flames, tomboys, old crones; there's also a little boy who hates traitor Murphy, and a treacherous man who has impregnated one of the girls. (Throw in a no good man who impregnated one of the girls and some Mexicans who are convinced there's gold in the fort.)
Well handled by director George Marshall, lots of good action (siege stories almost always work) and the supporting cast are good too. Audie has fun bossing the women around as if they're soldiers.
It's not a feminist tract by any means (one of the women say that they don't expect men to tell them how to raise babies and she doesn't expect them to tell men about strategy) but it offers a greater variety of roles for women than you normally see in Westerns.
No comments:
Post a Comment