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Strong and Moving!

Funny, strange, confrontational and subversive, this is one of the most interesting experiences you'll have at the cinema this year.

It's a movie as timely as it is provocative and amazingly, for much of its running time, it is weirdly funny.

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

Mediocre and unexceptional western dealing with a tale of the early days of Canadian Mounted Police and their relationships with the Indians . Average Western has Tyrone power as the Mountie on an assignment to the US to stop rebel Indians led by Stuart Randall as Standing Bear and Cameron Mitchell as Konah and their Cree tribes from launching an all out attack . As Tyrone , accompanied by Natayo: Thomas Gómez, has to keep rescuing hostages throughout the movie , as well as battling Cameron Mitchell and help harassed settlers fight Indians .There are White captives to be rescued : Robert Horten , Penny Edwards , too , and building a thrilling final confrontation . Spectacular , though medium budget western , with thrills , fights , go riding , and being mostly shot at an Indian location .Cast is pretty good , it stars Tyrone Power , a fine actor who performed some classic swashbucklers, until his early death in Spain when he was shooting Salomon and Queen of Sheba by King Vidor ; However , he is miscast in a very minor stuff for his usual standards . Costars Penny Edwards as the heroíne in distress who is kidnapped by Indians , she spent several years languishing in Roy Rogers Westerns . Support cast is frankly well ,such as : Cameron Mitchell , and Stuart Randall as two Indian chiefs who are raiding Montana from their Canadian reservation , Robert Horton as a nasty hostage , Thomas Gomez as a fatty scout and uncredited Richard Boone , Earl Holliman and Michael Rennie as narrator . Colorfully and attractively cinematographed in pale but brilliant Technicolor by the professional cameraman Harry Jackson , Universal's ordinary . The movie belongs to Canadian Mountie sub-genre including important titles as 1947 Unconquered by Cecil B DeMille , 1954 Saskatchewan by Raoul Walsh and 1961 Canadians by Burt Kennedy motion picture was regularly directed by Joseph M Newman. He was a prolific assistant director , writer and producer . As a filmmaker he realized a lot of films with no much success , and directing all kinds of genres with penchant for Western , Noir and Gangster movies such as The George Raft story , A Thunder of drums , The lawbreakers, The story of Arnold Rothstein , Tarzan the ape man , The big circus , Fort massacre , Flight to Hong Kong , Kiss of fire , Red skies of Montana , 711 Ocean drive, Vendetta , Outcasts of poker flat , Abandoned , Northwest Rangers , Don't Talk , Women in hiding, among others .

Fictional tale of interactions between a band of plains Cree in SW Saskatchewan, and the US Cavalry, on the one hand, followed by the newly emplaced Canadian Northwest Mounted Police, represented by one lone Mountie(Tyrone Power, as Duncan McDonald). As the story begins, a band of Cree, under the leadership of Standing Bear((Stuart Randall), have illegally relocated to Montana, where they hoped the bison had not been decimated, as they were starving. With the Technicolor cinematography, we see the largely pink and rusty red colors of the Arizona Colorado Plateau, and of Red Rock Canyon, in CA, instead of the expected Saskatchewan landscape....... The early spectacular battle scene between US cavalry and Cree, in the shallow water of a flood plain, clearly was lifted from the similar scene in the 1944 "Buffalo Bill", which I had seen earlier. The Cree decided the US plains was too dangerous to stay long, Thus, they crossed over to Canada, but not to their reservation. Thus, the Inspector(commander)(Howard Petrie) of the Mountie Fort Walsh sent a newly arrived recruit named Duncan MacDonald(Tyrone Power) to encourage the Cree to return to their former starvation reservation, and to release 2 white captives. MacDonald was termed by the Indians as a pony soldier......There are a number of action scenes scattered through the film, although much time is spent in negotiations and riding around. MacDonald is initially accompanied by Nayato(Thomas Gomez), who is rather afraid of the Cree, as his father was an enemy Blackfoot. He disappears about halfway through, as MacDonald sends him back to the fort. His place is more or less taken by a half-grown Cree orphan (Anthony Numkena, as Comes Running), who throws himself at MacDonald, whom he hopes will be his new father. The inclusion of this cute kid serves to lighten the otherwise serious nature of the screenplay. He will eventually come in handy when the war chief Konah tries to shoot MacDonald with an arrow........A council of chiefs and elders considers whether to accept MacDonald's demand to return to their reservation and release the captives unharmed. Meanwhile, the male captive, of somewhat disreputable background(Robert Hoston, as Jess), tries to escape, using a teepee stake as a club. He is attacked by Chief Konah's brother, who, in turn is killed by his own tomahawk. Jess almost pays with his life, as MacDonald shoots him off his getaway horse. This was a very risky thing for MacDonald to do, as he is charged with bringing the captives to the fort, unharmed. In retaliation for Jess's killing of his brother, Konah and others abduct the young woman captive: Emerald(Penny Edwards), tie her to a stake, and build a bond fire near her, with the purpose of burning her alive. If they intended to burn her, why did they set the fire some distance from her, rather than around her? This allowed MacDonald time to find her and fight with the Indians before she was burned......The screenplay purports to demonstrate that patient negotiation is often a better way than violence to settle a dispute, I'm still not sure why the Cree agreed to go back to their reservation, where they were starving. Also, I don't understand the bit about a supposed mirage of a river steamboat that everyone saw. What were they smoking? Incidentally, the only historic Standing Bear I could find reference to was a chief of the Ponco tribe, found in the central Midwest. In summary, this is a reasonably entertaining Northern, with some indications of a limited budget. See it at YouTube

I'm not sure, but has there ever been a film made with a less than sympathetic treatment of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police? The Mounties have done very well cinema wise and Pony Soldier is not setting any new patterns.It doesn't have to because it's a very entertaining film. The plot has a lot of similarities to Broken Arrow which 20th Century Fox also produced. Tyrone Power is playing Constable Duncan MacDonald, newly arrived at Fort Walsh and sent out on a mission to negotiate a peace with Cree Indians who've left their reserve and tangled with U.S. Cavalry south of the border. On the way back they've taken two white prisoners in a raid and Power is looking to get them back. One is Penny Edwards who catches the eye of Cameron Mitchell and he decides she'd make a good squaw for his little brother. The other is Robert Horton who's an escaped outlaw.So intrepid Mountie Power along with his Indian guide Thomas Gomez go to the camp of the Crees. Gomez is a most reluctant guide, in fact he's kind of blackmailed into making the journey. Thomas Gomez is an underrated and capable actor who deadpans some very funny lines.Two others in the cast really make this work. Little Anthony Numkena plays the Cree Indian boy who Power adopts and that turns out to be a great negotiating technique. But their affection is genuine and the scenes between Power and Numkena are some of the best in the film.Stuart Randall plays the Cree Chief Standing Bear. His portrayal is very similar to Jeff Chandler's more heralded portrayal of Cochise in Broken Arrow. In fact the Indians are not stereotyped, they are three dimensional characters here. Randall does a fine job as Standing Bear, negotiating with Power and having to contend with militants in his own camp led by Cameron Mitchell. Since Jeff Chandler had already broken the same ground with Cochise, Randall's performance has been overlooked, unfortunately so for him.Tyrone Power is a whole cloth hero here and does a fine job. One of the things that Americans don't appreciate is that the Mounties were there in large measure to protect the native Indians from white depredation. Canadians have always loved contrasting that to how the U.S. Cavalry treated the native population. Our cavalry was there on the settler's behalf. The contrast is certainly a matter of historical record, but I wonder if Canada had seen the immigration westward that America did, would their Mounties have been more like our blue coats.

The absence of a strong story line in the screenplay alleviates the overall effect of "Pony Soldier," but as filmed against a breathtaking Technicolor panorama, Joseph M Newman's film guarantees attention for its qualities of vivid action and the interesting authenticity with which life in last century times is depicted among the Cree Indians and the Mounted Police...These sequences abound in effective atmosphere and are increased substantially by Newman's splendid choice of players (Cameron Mitchell, Thomas Gomez and Penny Edwards) to surround head man Tyrone Power (in a colorful uniform) assigned to stop a tribe of hostile Crees from going on wage war against the U. S. Cavalry...The film - free from weeds - stands out as a little gem of Technicolor beauty... It contains: a spectacular attack on a wagon train; hostages held as a pledge; enraged Indians riding into the hills to burn at the stake a beautiful innocent girl; and a battle during which a handsome hero is saved by the arrow of an Indian lad...