The only thing that will slow them down is how many people they kill

sol1218

***SPOILERS*** Breaking out of the San Carlos Indian Reservation Ulzana, Joaquim Martinez, and eight of his fellow Apaches go on a blood curdling rampage against the white homesteaders in the area. The US Calvary gets their best Indian fighter McIntosh, Burt Lancaster, and his Apache scout Ke-Ni-Tay, Jorge Luke, to help them track down Ulzana and his raiders before they have the entire reservation rise up and join them. Using guerrilla-like tactics Ulzana despite being vastly outnumbered by the US Calvary seems to be getting his way who by now has terrorized not only the homesteaders but the US Calvary itself with his hit and run attacks.

The movie "Ulzana's Raid" pulls no punches in how it depicts the Apaches in their treatment of those unfortunate enough to end up being captured by them. There's one shocking scene when the Apaches attack a wagon with a mother and son riding in it as the calvary man guarding it takes off leaving the terrified woman and boy behind. The trooper Horowitz, Dean Smith, suddenly turns and looks like he's about to save the woman Mrs. Ginsford, Margare Fairchild, and her ten year-old son Bobby then without a second thought pulls out his revolver and shoots Mrs. Ginsford dead! It was his way of preventing the poor woman from suffering a fate worse then death at the hands of the oncoming Apaches. Horowitz himself seeing that there's no hope of him escaping blows his brains out and ends up with the Apaches sadistically tearing out his heart and gleefully playing catch with it! As for Bobby he's left alive by his mother and Horowitz's killers to be traumatized for the rest of his life in what he just experienced which was anything but an act of mercy on their part.

The US calvary troop lead by Lt. Garnett DeBuin, Bruce Davidson,makes slow but steady progress against Ulzana's raiders who are drawing the cavalrymen deeper into the desert in order to ambush them. As Lt. DeBuin, who's a very devote Christian, and his men come across what Ulzana did he starts to hate not only Ulzana and his gang of raiders in particular but all Apaches in general. Never seeing the savagery that he experienced in tracking down Ulzana Lt. DeBuin in fact becomes far more hateful against the Indians then McIntosh who's known the Apaches all his life! In fact McIntosh's wife is a full-blooded Apache Indian.

At first Lt. DeBuin was anything but impressed with either McIntosh or his Apache scout Ke-Ni-Tay in feeling that they were no better in some ways then the gang of Apache raiders they were tracking down. Not being outraged at Ulzana had the young Lt. DeBuin think that McIntosh was in some way excusing what he and his men did. It was later that McIntosh enlightened the young lieutenant in telling him that hating what Ulzana and his men, as well as the entire Apache tribe, did was like hating the desert for not having water. Let. DeBuin also didn't realize that it was the US government who by how it treated the Apache as well as all the other Indian tribes that in more ways then one created men like Ulzana.

The movie ends with Ulzana being trapped in a canyon with McIntosh and his men holding him off while Lt. DeBuin and the US Calvary comes to their rescue. The green and untested Lt. DeBuin had spread his men too thin and their rescue effort came up short with all of McIntosh's, with the exception of Ke-Ni-Tay, men ending up dead or wounded. Ulzana's men are all killed during the ambush he planed on McIntosh with him seeing that it's all over he lets himself get shot and killed by his brother-in-law who just happened to be Ke-Ni-Tay. McIntosh badly wounded in the fighting is left at his own request to die together with his men and as he takes out a cigarette and is about to have a last drag "Ulzana's Raid" goes into freeze frames and ends.

One of the very few realistic westerns to come out in years that lets the chips fall where they may in how things were in the war between the White Man and the American Indian back in the late 19th century. We see that both sides were anything but civilized in treating each other and that's what also had Lt. DeBuin finally realize in what he so blindly overlooked in the Apaches, as well as all the other Indian Tribes, that he was dealing with on both sides of the battle-line.

score 8/10

sol1218 5 August 2007

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw1711352/