Hey, it's Guy Kibbee! Yes, I had to look this one up, but I knew I recognized him from somewhere. Turns out he played the Governor in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. Boom. Recognized.
Yes. There is a cowboys vs. Indians scene. This does happen.
Henry Fonda and John Wayne are obviously the best part of this. Although some of the supporting characters are kind of fun they're the only two who seem to keep the plot moving and they're both very dynamic and interesting here. Even if John Wayne is playing the exact same character he has always played. Has anyone else noticed that John Wayne stayed middle-aged for like, an exceptionally long time? In The Big Trail he practically looks like a fetus then by Stagecoach, a decade later, he's kind of weathered. By Searchers he's looking stockier but basically still like a weathered John Wayne; same with North to Alaska. Even in True Grit and Rooster Cogburn he looks like he's settled in to the older part of middle-aged. If I were to describe the way John Wayne looks through his filmography in book-selling terms I would say he goes from New to Slightly Used to Some Wear and then just kind of hovers there. I dunno. This took much longer to write than it did to think up and it may even be unfounded. Maybe if you watched every single movie of his since for a while there he was doing at least 3 or 4 a year you could see him age. I guess it doesn't really matter. Ahem.
That guy: Victor McLaglen! The jerk squire and Maureen O'Hara's older brother in The Quiet Man!
Shirley Temple, playing a charisma vacuum.
That guy: yeah, the guy on the left is another fun sucker. But the guy on the right is Bert from It's a Wonderful Life!
I thought it did a pretty interesting job looking at the old ways versus new. John Wayne's character knows that they need to work with and respect the Apaches and he takes his promises to them seriously (compromise = new), while Henry Fonda uses that trust to set a trap for them (antagonism = old). The movie is kind of good once you get to that place, which doesn't happen until the second hour and takes a lot more exposition and set-up (during which we have to endure Shirley Temple and whatshisface's bland romantic sub-plot) than seems necessary.
I mean, I kind of got the idea that Henry Fonda is a total dick who is set in his ways in the first 20 minutes, when he's whining about being sent there and criticizing basically everything in sight. But no, we have to sit through him being a dick to his daughter, to John Wayne, to Bert and Governor Hubert and Red Will. Seriously, there are about a dozen scenes of someone saying, "Hey maybe we shouldn't trick the Apaches since they're really blood-thirsty/maybe that boring kid can take care of your daughter if they want to go for a horseback ride/maybe you should stop assuming you already know everything about this post since it's nothing like your position back East" and Fonda just sort of priggishly telling them to shut up and respect his authority, dammit.
So yes, when the movie finally gets to the actual story it wants to tell, about the soldier's losing their lives due to the increasingly poor decisions of Owen Thursday (a terrible name, by the way) it works. But really, I had him pegged for an asshole the minute I realized he named his daughter Philadelphia Thursday. There's this weird scene where she's explaining that she's named that because like, her great-grandmother was born there or something? I don't know I seriously hated the Shirley Temple parts of this movie and I'm going to blame the terrible name on Henry Fonda's character because he's already getting the blame for being a douche and pointlessly leading his soldiers to death so why not?
But otherwise it was pretty good. I did like the post-script that has John Wayne being very diplomatic about Thursday, calling him brave or something and basically not telling this crowd of reporters what a raging jerk the guy was when they tell him about how Thursday is considered a hero. That was a nice touch, and a pretty good shot at a lot of the old Western heroes. (See also: Little Big Man). Obviously I was affected in the way Ford was hoping because I hated Fonda's stupid face. Oh and Wayne's character was named Kirby York? Because apparently no one was allowed to go though childhood unscathed back then.
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