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Very well executed

Let's be realistic.

This movie was so-so. It had it's moments, but wasn't the greatest.

if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

"No! No! Don't shoot, there's a white woman down there!" (actual line)This is another, in a long line, of movies that gives lip-service to the plight of the Native American in their movie posters (in this case by showing them all getting butchered) but fails to actually include a single Indigenous actor or get history correct. We're told that these are Cheyenne and that this is Sand Creek, but don't start looking around for Chief Black Kettle or the Arapaho because what's more important than historical accuracy is a romantic comedy between two bumbling white people.Was there ever a time when a young man, tied and bound and fighting for his life, spent more energy attempting to use his teeth to pull Candice Bergen's skirt back down over her bottom (twice) so that when he finally got around to untying her hands he wasn't confronted with (gasp!) naked female flesh? Peter Strauss plays said young man, Honus Gant, and the best you can say about Grant is that he's completely useless. In theory he is suppose to be in the U.S. Cavalry, but that implies some level of skill and instead we're treated with a neutered fop who, when he isn't flailing comically around in the underbrush, is making rude "girls are icky" remarks to Bergen, because it's the 70s and apparently audiences loved their leading men emasculated and chauvinistic in equal measures. I was born in 1970, the year this movie came out, and while I know about My Lai whatever emotional impact Ralph Nelson was able to make at the time by connecting this movie with that atrocity has long been lost. Indeed, emotionally, if you actually want to know about what happened at the Sand Creek massacre, I suggest reading, "Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee," by Dee Brown, which also came out the same year as this movie and puts Nelson to shame. But if you're more interested in watching Candice Bergen belch and do her "Ugh! Pale Face!" routine, then Soldier Blue is the movie for you!

I saw this movie in high school and just watched it last night on Netflix streaming. A very powerful movie with one of the most violent and gruesome climaxes ever filmed (based on the 1864 Sand Creek massacre). Despite some inconsistencies (it's a work of fiction inspired by real events), this movie brings home the dark side of humanity, war and US imperialism.So what has really changed in over 100 years? Judging from our interventions in the Middle East, not a whole lot. This is a must see movie for anyone who is on the fence about their anti-war beliefs and wanting to support a government who commits these types of atrocities with our tax dollars that they take from us through coercive means.OK, enough of my radical, libertarian diatribe here. One suggestion. Don't eat anything while watching the last 20 minutes or so of the movie. (Is that a spoiler? I don't know but I labeled as one)

I saw Soldier Blue several times at the cinema when it first came out, covered in notoriety, and have watched it a number of times since.The story is simple. A cavalry detail is wiped out by Indians. The only survivors are cavalryman Honus Gant (Peter Strauss) and "rescued" (from Indians) Cresta Maribel Lee (Candice Bergen). As they trek back to civilisation, encountering further Indians as well as creepy gunrunner Isaac Q Cumber (geddit?) (Donald Pleasance), they argue because Cresta seeks to challenge Honus' preconceptions of the Indians as murderous savages and, gradually, fall in love. When they finally reach the "civilisation" of a forward army camp, they are just in time to witness the horrific slaughter of a peaceful Indian settlement by the cavalry, making it clear to Honus (and the audience) that not only was the savagery far from one-sided, in the cavalry's case it was backed up by superior weaponry.The central section of the film, when Honus and Cresta are wandering through the wilderness enduring trials and falling in love, is thoughtful, eventful, gentle and exciting. But the raison d'etre of this movie - stated, if obliquely, in Buffy St Marie's opening theme song - is the massacre at the end, which is genuinely horrific (if rather dated in terms of special effects).The opening attack is set in order to align the audience's sympathies with Honus, so that we travel on the same journey as him, starting by regarding the Indians as murderous barbarians, and ending up forced to confront the idea that maybe it is we who are barbaric.Peter Strauss and Candice Bergen both give perhaps their best performances ever.An over-sensationalised and under-rated movie.

"I would say that most people in our company didn't consider the Vietnamese human." – Dennis Bunning "It looks like a bloodbath down there! What the hell is going on?" – Hugh Thompson (helicopter pilot hovering over My Lai) "Soldier Blue" often gets touted as a "revisionist western", but its actually got more in common with exploitation cinema, of which it's one of the genre's best.Directed by Ralph Nelson, "Solder Blue" offers a recreation of the Sand Creek massacre, a horrific incident which occurred in 1864, in which a 700 man force of the Colorado Territory militia, attacked, destroyed and raped a village of Cheyenne and Arapaho Indians. Almost 200 natives were slaughtered during the attack, most of whom were women and children.But what made "Soldier Blue" popular were its allusions to the Vietnam War. The film was released in 1970, several months after news of the My Lai Massacre (and its attempted cover-up) was leaked to the public. The My Lai Massacre, of course, occurred in 1968, and involved a United States Army task force which marched into My Lai, a hamlet in South Vietnam, and killed over 500 civilians.Helicopter pilots flying over the town reported being shocked at the violent frenzy occurring outside their windows. Down below, soldiers were overcome with blood-lust, gangs of young Americans raping women, babies tossed in the air and shot, the elderly tied up and tortured, men decapitated, children mutilated...it was human "nature" at its most dark.But what was worse was the wave of denial that promptly followed. Politicians, generals and congressmen began to downplay the incident, doing their best to keep the massacre under wraps. They succeeded at first, but eventually letters circulated to the press and the incident went public in 1969.News of the My Lai Massacre caused anti-war protesters to grow even more vocal. Support of the Vietnam War was at an all time low, horrific images were all over the news and horror reports flooded the radios. In this era of bloodshed, cinema likewise became increasingly violent, films like "The Wild Bunch", "Straw Dogs", "Blue Soldier" etc, venting their rage on screen. Cashing in on this trend was "Soldier Blue", notorious for its "massacre sequence" in which boys are shot, children are trampled by horses, squaws are beheaded, men are impaled, women are stripped, breasts are cut, civilians are mutilated and all manners of sadistic evil and re-enacted, all in the name of "keeping the country clean". It's nauseating.7.5/10 – Veering from powerful to ridiculous, this little western continues the trend of telling "Indian stories" from the point of view of "white men" who enter the tribe. Like "A Man Called Horse", "Amistad", "Dances With Wolves", even the recent "Avatar", these films are really just exercises in white guilt.Worth one viewing (uncut version only). See Altman's superb "Buffalo Bill".