A Man Called Horse (1970)

It was 1825 and John Morgan (Richard Harris) was a bored English lord.  Being a noble with a military commission and inherited wealth wasn't for him.  No, he had resigned his commission and left England.  In lieu of wealth and status, he was shooting "prairie chickens" in the wilds of North America with toothless bumpkins who served as his guides.  Even this had become tedious.  No sooner had he declared his intent to return to St. Louis than a band of Sioux warriors fell upon his camp.  The chief, Yellow Hand (Manu Tupou), took his as a slave.  He described him as no different from a horse, and thus he was thereafter called Shunkawakan, which means horse.

Morgan was ill-treated by the tribe, and his every attempt at escape was easily thwarted.  Soon he discovered an ally among the Sioux; Batise (Jean Gascon), another slave who was fluent in English, French, and Sioux.  From Batise, he learned how to survive.  From his own grit, he learned how to thrive.  In time, he was embraced by the tribe, rising to a valued member.  He was initiated by the Vow to the Sun and married Yellow Hand's sister, Running Deer (Corinna Tsopei).  So satisfying had his life become, all thoughts of escape vanished.

Here is a movie that long predates Dances with Wolves, another movie where a white man adopts Sioux ways.  Historically, there are many examples of whites being captured - mostly as children - by various tribes and then being raised among them.  A contemporary movie, Little Big Man (1970), saw comical take on the white man among the Cheyenne.  The big claim to fame is that Sioux participated, offering details on the culture, practices, and rituals.

Why in the world did Joe (Dub Taylor), Morgan's guide, take him so far from civilization to shoot nothing special?  Joe and his cohorts proved to be useless, clearly unsuited to wandering the frontier. It is only a couple of years since the Arikara War (1823), the start of which was shown in The Revenant (2015).  These guys really are reckless, but how else are we going to explain an Englishman captured by Sioux? Richard Harris reprised the role in two sequels.

Iron Eyes Cody, best remembered as the Indian who wept about pollution, has a role as the medicine man.  He made a career of playing Native Americans, claiming such ancestry, despite being of Italian heritage.

Just okay.

Unforgiven (1992)

In Big Whiskey, Wyoming, a cowboy had badly scarred a prostitute.  Where the prostitutes wanted the sheriff, Little Bill Dagget (Gene Hackman), to hang the two cowboys, he opted to have them pay restitution.  To the brothel owner, not the mutilated woman.  Infuriated, the women pooled their money to hire gunmen to kill the cowboys.

William Munny (Clint Eastwood) is a poor Kansas farmer with two kids.  His wife died nearly three years ago.  It is a hard life.  While trying to separate diseased pigs from healthy ones, a rider appears.  The Schofield Kid is off to collect a bounty in Wyoming.  He doesn't want to go alone.  Will was a terror in his younger days, a violent drunkard who killed without compunction.  "I'm not that man anymore," he explains, declining the offer.  However, he soon reconsiders and rides off to enlist his old buddy, Ned Logan (Morgan Freeman).  The pair find the Schofield Kid on the way to Wyoming.

English Bob (Richard Harris) is known as the Duke of Death, at least that is the title of the dime novel on his adventures in the West.  He arrives in Big Whiskey to collect the bounty but soon discovers an old acquaintance: Little Bill.  It is far from a happy reunion.

There are no heroes.  The Old West is a brutal place where self-interest outweighs all.  The tales told by Little Bill, Ned Logan, and William Munny paint a picture of violence and murder.  These are not good men, though they may be men of their time and place.

Recommended.

Major Dundee (1965)

It is 1864 in New Mexico.  Major Amos Dundee (Charleton Heston) and his column have come upon the site of a massacre.  Sierra Charriba, an Apache chief, has been terrorizing the countryside.  Dundee decides that he must track down the Apache and recover the children that were abducted.  With the Civil War in full swing, troops to counter Charriba are limited.  However, there are Confederate prisoners-of-war available; Captain Ben Tyreen (Richard Harris), a one-time friend of Dundee, is among them.  Dundee sets out with a mix of the fort garrison soldiers, Confederate prisoners, volunteer criminals, and civilian volunteers to chase the Apache through Mexico.  On this odyssey, they are ambushed, fight among themselves, battle the French forces in Mexico, find love, get drunk, fiesta, experience loss, and battle the Apache.

In addition to Heston and Harris, James Coburn plays Sam Potts, a one-armed scout, Brock Peters is Sgt. Aesop, the leader of the colored troops, and Jim Hutton is Lt. Graham of the artillery.  Lt. Ryan (Michael Anderson Jr.) provides narration throughout the movie as he records the events in his diary.  The events start in October 1864 and the final scene takes place in April 1865, after the Civil War had ended though they don't know it.

The movie is a hodgepodge with too many characters and too much going on.  Where this complexity would be great in a book or a miniseries, it is distracting in a movie.  According to IMDb, the script was still a work in progress during shooting and Sam Peckinpah was mostly drunk to where Heston was required to do a fair amount of the directing.

There is a gem to be had in this story and with these characters, but Peckinpah and Heston failed to find it.  Mediocre.

The Wild Geese (1978)

Allen Faulkner (Richard Burton) arrives secretly in London to meet with Sir Edward Matherson (Stewart Granger).  Faulkner is a mercenary leader.  Some years ago, he had been retained by President Limbani to help retake his country - somewhere around Congo - from usurpers but Limbani was killed en route to their meeting.  Sir Edward reveals that Limbani is alive but not for long.  Sir Edward would like to free Limbani to secure the rights to his country's copper mines.  Faulkner gathers his core team.  There is Rafer Janders (Richard Harris), Shawn Fynn (Roger Moore), Pieter Coetzee (Hardy Kruger), and Sandy Young (Jack Watson).  They recruit 40 or so men and fly to Africa for training.  On Christmas Day, they insert via parachute to rescue Limbani and secure an airport for their extraction.  Everything goes perfectly until their extraction is canceled.  Now the fun begins.

Some things are telegraphed from the start.  When Faulkner recruits Janders, his son is introduced and a proposed vacation is mentioned.  Gee, I wonder how that will go?  It announced that he was doomed, the one character whose fate was sealed from the moment he is introduced.  Disappointing.

This is an action film in the days before flipping, spinning, double-gun shooting nonsense. Overwhelming forces really are overwhelming. Casualties are high and, in the end, it was all for nothing. Still, it was exciting getting there.

Thumbs up.

Man in the Wilderness

Forty four years before The Revenant, Richard Harris starred in Man in the Wilderness, a movie also based on the harrowing survival tale of Hugh Glass.  For some reason, the character is named Zach Bass and all the other fur trappers are likewise renamed.  The story opens in 1820 with the view of a keel boat being hauled through a wooded area by a long line of mules.  Captain Henry (John Huston) stands on the ship with his well-worn top hat and gazes about as if he was at sea.  Meanwhile, Bass and Lowrie are hunting.  Lowrie merely wounded a deer while Bass killed one.  While Lowrie took the one back to the camp, Bass went in search of the wounded deer but found a bear instead.  The bear mauls Bass nearly to death before half a dozen trappers arrive and kill it.  After he is stitched up, Captain Henry asks two men to stay behind and bury him when he dies.  If he isn't dead by morning, "Kill him."  Yikes, that's rather unfriendly.  It is unclear why Bass couldn't just be loaded into the boat rather than left behind.  While waiting, Fogerty and Lowrie spot some Arikara warriors and decide to flee, leaving Bass to his fate.

 

There are a lot of flashbacks to 'explain' Zach Bass, from his mother's death, his difficulty at an orphanage, his wife, his wife's grave, and his son.  It is repeatedly shown that Bass has no use for God, notably because of these prior hardships.  Perhaps the oddest scene was when, while hiding in the brush, Bass watched a squaw give birth.  Clearly, the scene is meant to kindle his paternal instincts and give him cause to return home.  It is also strange that many of the trappers believe Bass is alive and tracking them; from their perspective, this is a horror film.  That was a weak part of the film.  In theory, the trappers are constantly moving, trying to get back to civilization with their keel boat and pelts.  Meanwhile, Bass fishes, hunts, skins and tans hides to create some new clothes, builds a spear from bits salvaged from some slaughtered hunters, and hikes through the wilderness on a crutch.  How did he catch them?  Well, back to that horror film notion, no matter how slow he walks or how fast they run, he must catch them.  When Bass began his recovery and trek after those who abandoned him, he was set on revenge.  When he arrived, all the flashbacks and encounters along the way had mellowed him to where he just walked away after collecting his rifle.  He had found God and forgiveness.

 

The inclusion of a son in both versions of the tale was interesting.  Zach Bass had a toddler son waiting for him back home, a reason to survive and raise him.  Hugh Glass (Leonardo DiCaprio) had a son who was murdered, providing a reason to survive and avenge him.  Also interesting is that both Harris and DiCaprio were 41 when they played the character, which is about how old the real Hugh Glass was when he met the bear.

 

Man in the Wilderness has a gauzy feel to it.  When Harris is on screen, there is a melancholy score that is nonetheless optimistic.  Sad but upbeat?  Then, switching back to the keel boat, there is a thundering ride to adventure score.  It was awkward and distracting.  Like The Revenant, the movie is only partly accurate to history.  However, since all the names have been changed, that's fine by me; it is a fictional tale based on a true story whereas The Revenant is a true story with fictional rewrites.  However, I like that Harris didn't seek revenge in the end.  Of course, he didn't have a murdered son to avenge but that was an ahistorical rewrite by the filmmakers.  In this aspect, Man in the Wilderness was truer to the real Hugh Glass.  Even so, The Revenant is the better movie.