This is a truly epic Western - epic in the moral sense: It operates as a great ceremony, a funeral ode for a great people, and the Homeric nobility of their doomed warrior heroes. The whole film sweeps majestically along with the native Americans to the bitter end of their doomed civilisation, and all the distracting side-plots are merely adumbrated at the margins of the action. The U.S. Cavalry, too, is given its due meed of admiration for the honest professionalism of its best soldiers, and the finest representatives of its military tradition. In this, Webb's film is reminiscent of a John Ford Cavalry Western. But it has something else: The awareness of a 'great game' - almost in the sense this term was applied by the English to their Imperial adventure being played out with mutual honour and respect, even admiration and fondness, between the great rivals for possession of an entire Continent.
This is a truly great film, unblemished by the jittery special pleading of Hollywood that bespeaks the unacknowledged guilt of the American White Man. This is a sincere film - not a film of gestures: It is, as I began by saying, a grand Ceremony. And in the Ceremony is the aching sense of the loss of a Great Game which conferred greatness upon all who were brave enough to participate on equal terms.
This is a truly great film, unblemished by the jittery special pleading of Hollywood that bespeaks the unacknowledged guilt of the American White Man. This is a sincere film - not a film of gestures: It is, as I began by saying, a grand Ceremony. And in the Ceremony is the aching sense of the loss of a Great Game which conferred greatness upon all who were brave enough to participate on equal terms.