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Soldier Blue (1970)

Rate: 4
Viewed: 6/24

6/24: I never heard of Soldier Blue until somebody recommended it because of the brutality that's on the same level as Mandingo.

After enduring one of the longest, most pointless stretches of yapping in cinema history, what I had been waiting for finally came which painted a true picture of a massacre. I think that's the director's excuse for doing this movie; it's all about the finale while he can make up crap to fill in the first ninety minutes. The whole thing with Isaac Q. Cumber is distracting as hell.

While watching the atrocity, I thought of two questions. One, was it what they did back then? Two, was it a payback for what happened at the beginning? Anyway, the incident is based on the Sand Creek massacre which occurred in Kiowa County, Colorado, on November 29, 1864. In case if you're wondering, the film was shot on location in Mexico. When one of the characters mentioned Little Bighorn, the timeline is way off by twelve years.

It's weird to see Candice Bergen acting this way. She's never like this in other films. Her co-star is even worse, making it hard for me to believe that this is the same Peter Strauss of The Jericho Mile fame. To improve Soldier Blue more, it'll be a good idea to limit their time together to no more than fifteen minutes. Better yet, the filmmakers should do the story in its entirety from the American Indians' perspective.

All in all, director Ralph Nelson failed at what he set out to do by turning Soldier Blue into a boring film with serious editing issues and an exploitative gore-fest at the end.

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