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Ulzana's Raid (1972)

Rate: 9
Viewed: 2/22, 7/25

Ulz
2/22: Like The Wild Bunch and The Hunting Party, Ulzana's Raid is a brutal Western picture.

The talgine on the DVD cover gets it right: To defeat the Apaches, they had to be just as savage. In response to "What we have to determine is how many of them there are, and whether they are hostile," Burt Lancaster says, "Well, the first is open to question. The second you can bet money on." To drive the point further later, he stresses, "He don't mean to fight you nowhere. He only means to kill you."

A lot of Ulzana's Raid reminds me of The Searchers. Giving another outstanding performance, Burt Lancaster plays a world-weary scout who has seen it all. When he gives advice that's backed by Ke-Ni-Tay (Jorge Luke), everybody should heed it, but Lieutenant Garnett DeBuin (Bruce Davison) is too idealistic to believe him, hence the ending that's not well-thought-out. DeBuin keeps asking why the Apaches are like this, but the answer is obvious: the United States stole their land and massacred their people.

I love Rob Roy with Liam Neeson and Tim Roth, and the script was done by Alan Sharp who should have won the Oscar for it. Well, what do you know? He wrote the screenplay for Ulzana's Raid which is intelligent with many great lines. It's a thinking man picture for sure. Believe it or not, the fighting between the U.S. Army and various Apache nations in the southwest from 1849 to 1886 is the longest war ever in history which ended with the surrender of Geronimo. The brutality shown by the Apaches did happen for real.

By the way, I didn't know Bruce Davison went that far back as he looked young in this movie. Here's how he got cast: "I went in to see Robert Aldrich and said, 'Mr. Aldrich, you have no idea how much The Sand Pebbles meant to me.' He said, 'Thanks, kid, but Robert Wise made that film. But you're just dumb enough, you have the part.'"

All in all, Ulzana's Raid is among the most overlooked movies of the 70's.

7/25: I've upped my rating for Ulzana's Raid from '8' to '9'.

Burt Lancaster is brilliant, and the story is fantastic with lots of brutality and battle strategy. He later said, "The only 'first screenplays' that I really liked were Birdman of Alcatraz and Ulzana's Raid." It's so much better than Broken Arrow by pulling no punches. Some have compared the film to what happened in the Vietnam War, and I suppose that's valid.

All in all, Ulzana's Raid is a must-see Western.