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I hate westerns so why do I adore ULZANA`S RAID ? Simple - it`s not a western
Question : What`s the connection between M.A.S.H , TOO LATE THE HERO and CHATO`S LAND ? The answer is they`re all Vietnam allegories . The Hollywood conservative establishment didn`t allow film makers to voice their comments on the war unless they agreed with it ( Witness the trainwreck that is THE GREEN BERETS ) so the only way auteurs could get round this was if they dressed their stories up as something else . Add ULZANA`S RAID to the list
Scottish screenwriter Alan Sharp has written a great script . It has a simple premise which is usually the sign of a good film . US troops go after an Apache war party . There that`s it the entire premise and a tightly plotted one at that , something that is not often seen in Hollywood scripts nowadays . And being a `Nam allegory there`s a lot of character interaction between a naive inexperienced officer and his men who are grizzled veterans. Sharp has also made a barbed comment on audience identification , everyone can relate to the white American soldiers while no one can relate to the Apaches murdering and raping homesteaders , but the homesteaders are surrogate Vietnamese , so at the same time ULZANA`S RAID represents contempary America through both the white calvarymen and the Apache , something no one seems to have picked up on , but certainly deliberate on the part of Sharp
Flaws ? Well I do think the film deserved a bigger budget than the reported 1.2 million dollars , sometimes the production feels like a TVM while the music swings between a genre western score and a romantic comedy , believe me no one will confuse ULZANA`S RAID with a rom-com . But these minor flaws don`t stop ULZANA`S RAID from being a great film due to the script , the cast and director Robert Aldrich
score 8/10
Theo Robertson 6 May 2003
Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw0126513/ |
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20-2-2021 00:05:08