Ulzana's Raid

Oh my readers, yesterday I wrote a long, detailed and potentially insightful review of Dr. Strangelove, only to see it swallowed up by a hideous Blogger gaffe. As much as I'd love to review that venerable classic, for now I'll put it off for more exotic fare.

The Western genre was in full revisionist mode in 1972, when Robert Aldrich made Ulzana's Raid. This stark, brutal depiction of a minor Indian War is remarkably unique, avoiding pompous posturing for an honest depiction of a nasty time and place.

Apache Ulzana (Joaquin Martinez) escapes an Indian reservation with a handful of followers, and begins a reign of terror massacring settlers and cavalrymen. Shavetail Lieutenant DeBuin (Bruce Davison) is assigned to lead a company of cavalry troopers, including veteran scout MacIntire (Burt Lancaster), a friendly Apache (Jorge Luke) and a seasoned Sergeant (Richard Jaeckal) to track Ulzana down. The cavalry quickly uncovers Ulzana's atrocities, and the naively moral DeBuin clashes with his vengeful troopers.

Robert Aldrich's Vera Cruz (1954) was one of the earliest "revisionist" titles, a cynical shoot-'em-up that cast Burt Lancaster and Gary Cooper as cold-blooded mercenaries embroiled in a Mexican civil war. Ulzana's Raid is even better, showing that neither side on the frontier held a monopoly on violence and cruelty. When DeBuin innocently asks how Apaches could be so cruel, he's told that it's just the way things are.

Ulzana's Raid is a real kick in the teeth to anyone expecting a traditional oater. At a time when Westerns generally depicted Indians as innocent proto-hippies (Little Big Man), Aldrich shows the Apache engaging in heinous atrocities: torture deaths, rape and mutilation. Nor does the cavalry come off well: In one of the strongest scenes, a cavalryman "saves" a woman from the Apache by shooting her. DeBuin's Christian pretensions are honest but foolish, as guerilla warfare drags everyone into the moral abyss. Aldrich and writer Alan Sharp aren't concerned with either side's "righteousness" when their conduct is so brutal.

Aldrich makes beautiful use of Southwestern locations, with striking photography courtesy of Joseph F. Biroc. Aldrich wisely keeps most of the actual violence off-screen; the bloody, burnt and mangled corpses are horrifying enough. The final battle, a protracted ambush in a canyon, is a wonderful set-piece, exciting and uniquely staged. The showdown with Ulzana, in particular, makes for a unique conclusion. The film flows at a wonderful pace, giving Sharp's sparse but effective script time to sketch the characters and conflicts in believable terms.

Burt Lancaster gives a strong performance, curbing his usual exuberance for a restrained, weather-beaten professional. Bruce Davison is superb, and Jorge Luke makes a strong impression as a loyal Apache scout. Richard Jaeckal (3:10 to Yuma) gets one of his best roles as a grizzled Sergeant.

Ulzana's Raid stands as Robert Aldrich's best film, and possibly the best Indian Western ever (save Devil's Doorway). Eschewing cliches, or an obnoxious revisionist message, Aldrich presents a strikingly frank and nihilistic view of the Old West.

The Dirty Dozen

Robert Aldrich's The Dirty Dozen (1967) is a pretty good war film posturing as something significant. Aldrich tries to sell the audience an anti-war message; as such, the film is a complete failure. As an irreverent, goofy shoot-'em-up, it holds up reasonably well, and that's the level on which it should be viewed.

Britain, just before D-Day. Hard-nosed Major Reisman (Lee Marvin) is assigned by General Warden (Ernest Borgnine) to assemble a team of twelve criminals, several of them murderers and rapists, for a suicide mission into Nazi-occupied France. He manages to train them, slowly earning their respect, moulding them into a team, and getting a chance to embarrass his stuffy superiors, particularly Colonel Breed (Robert Ryan). Then comes the mission: parachuting to a French villa used by Nazi officers for R&R, and slaughter as many as possible. It's a dirty job, but our "dirty dozen" manages to pull it off, but not without significant losses.

The Dirty Dozen's problem is its message. Aldrich was a committed leftist, and decidedly cynical about war and heroism in films like Vera Cruz and Attack! Here, he tries to have his cake and eat it too, showing bloody mayhem for the conservatives while lobbing some anti-establishment, anti-war messages at the liberal crowd. This is clearly why the film's popularity is so enduring, but it works best on the former, simpler level.

Aldrich spells out the message clearly enough. Our characters are criminals, the stiff-necked Generals are push-over martinets, and the anti-Establishment credentials are early. The mission itself, far beyond the ambiguous worth of Bridge on the River Kwai and The Guns of Navarone's commando raids, is straightforward murder: slaughtering dozens of helpless men and women with grenades and machine guns. Clearly, we're supposed to take away that war is a dirty, crazy business, essentially murder on a grand scale.

If this was the intent, then the movie bombs. Aldirch wants us to be aghast at the mass murder, but it's is presented as thrilling, blood-splattered fun, without the visceral impact of Bonnie and Clyde or The Wild Bunch. Our twelve anti-heroes are criminals, but the film finds mitigating circumstances for most of them, and aside from the psychotic Maggot, none of them is really a bad guy. Aldrich wants us to find their shenanigans amusing, and cheer when they "stick it to the man" - fair enough, but it rather kills the message. If you're making an anti-war film, you shouldn't make violence fun and exciting, or the criminal-protagonists seem like cool guys.

The movie works fine without its ostensible thematic baggage. Aldrich's obnoxious posturing aside, he does a great job with the actors, making us empathize with this bunch of crooks, and the training scenes are excellent black comedy. We enjoy watching this raucuous team form into a coherent unit, and laugh at most of their antics - a sub-mental goofball (Donald Sutherland) impersonating a general, the botched war game exercise, Reisman and Wladislaw's (Charles Bronson) unconvincing German act ("Act mean and grunt"). The first two hours are loads of fun; Aldrich does a great job moulding this group of misfits and most have enough screen time to shine.

Curiously, after all this build-up, the set-piece raid on the chateau is rather anti-climactic. Aldrich handles the action well, but the staging is less-than-impressive: instead of a big shootout, we have solitary sentries popping out to get slaughtered one by one. The highlight of the scene is Jim Brown's famous grenade run, a thrilling set-piece within a set-piece. Aldrich certainly deserves credit for making his anti-heroes mortal, something rare in this genre, and the movie ends on an amusingly cynical note.

Lee Marvin, in the midst of his brief flirtation with stardom, gives his most iconic performance. Reisman embodies Marvin's screen persona - tough-as-nails, cynical and defiant - and his performance is flawless. The huge ensemble cast is well-used: John Cassavetes (Rosemary's Baby) got an Oscar nod for his loudmouth troublemaker, but the real stand-outs are Charles Bronson (Once Upon a Time in the West), in perhaps his best role, and Donald Sutherland (JFK), who gets the film's best scene impersonating a General. Jim Brown is superb: it's easy to dismiss his part as tokenism, but a tough, take-no-shit black character was unheard of in 1960's Hollywood, and Brown pulls it off wonderfully. Groggy favorites Robert Ryan and Ernest Borgnine are poorly used as stiff-necked brass, and Telly Savalas's scenery-chewing is a bit much.

The Dirty Dozen is a fun shoot-'em-up lacking the courage of its radical convictions. On the commando movie scale, it's more the blood-spattered frivolity of Where Eagles Dare than the serious action of Guns of Navarone and The Train. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

PS: I know it's not March yet.

Vera Cruz

Defeated Confederate Colonel Ben Trane (Gary Cooper) drifts south into Mexico after the Civil War, hoping to sell his services to whichever army - the Juaristas or Emperor Maximillian (George Macready) and his French allies - offers better pay. The straight-laced Trane joins up with Joe Erin (Burt Lancaster), a grinning psychopath with a multi-racial gang of American criminals, gunslingers and deserters, and they are recruited by Maximillian's lackey, the Marquis de Labordere (Cesar Romero), to protect a French countess (Denise Darcel) being transported to Vera Cruz. Along the way, Trane and Erin discover the wagon is actually carrying gold, and a complicated series of schemes, tricks, and double-crosses between the Americans, the Countess, the French troops, and Juaristas under General Ramirez (Morris Ankrum) develops. It leads to an explosive climax as Erin and Trane join forces with the Juaristas, and Trane is torn between his chivalrous nature and his desire for gold.

Vera Cruz is an extremely important landmark in film history. Directed by leftist filmmaker Robert Aldrich (also responsible for such films as Apache, Attack! and The Dirty Dozen), it paints a cynical portrayal of American intervention in Latin America and depicts gunslingers as, at best conflicted individuals, at worst mass murderers. The movie's influence can be seen in any number of films: The Magnificent Seven, which could be read as a rebuttal to Aldrich's film; the Man With No Name Westerns of Sergio Leone and Clint Eastwood; Richard L. Brooks' equally cynical The Professionals, also with Lancaster; and Sam Peckinpah's Major Dundee and The Wild Bunch. But Vera Cruz is more than just a bit of cinematic history. Although a bit dry and draggy in spots, Vera Cruz is, for most of its length, a largely entertaining and enjoyable Western.

For a film made in 1954, during the midst of the Cold War, with the conservative Westerns of John Wayne dominating the genre, Vera Cruz must have come as a shock. The film's characters are anything but the traditional white-hatted, two-fisted, unequivocally good heroes. Presaging Henry Fonda's villainous turn in Once Upon a Time in the West (albeit not in as extreme a fashion), Western icon Gary Cooper plays a character who, as outwardly chivalrous as he appears, cares only about money and is not above betrayal or double-crossing to get it. Ben Trane only becomes a noble warrior at the very end, and is driven to it mostly by the increasingly psychotic actions of Erin. Another classic Hollywood icon, Burt Lancaster, is even more extreme. Joe Erin dons a black outfit, spins and draws his pistol for fun, and sports a charming yet disconcerting grin. He is not above double-cross, trickery, or murder (even of his sidekicks and partners) to achieve his ends. While Erin seems a mirror image of the noble Trane, he is simply an uninhibited image of Trane himself. Other characters are equally duplictious: not only the protagonists, but the Marquis, the Emperor, the Countess, and even members of Erin's gang are constantly double-crossing one another, with an ever-shifting series of alliances broken as soon as they are made. Only Morris Ankrum's noble Juarista is a truly heroic character, though he never really evolves beyond a stereotype.

The film's attitude towards violence is fairly casual and shockingly blunt. In the film's most affective scene, Erin, with his men surrounded by Ramirez's Juaristas, takes a small group of children hostage and threatens to kill them unless his opponent withdraws. Ramirez nobly intones, "Wars are not won by killing children", but this is perhaps the only example of chivalry in the film. The large scale action scenes are, if not graphic by modern standards, still pretty rough for 1954. We see a Juarista shot in the face by the Countess, a captured Juarista corralled and tortured by mounted French lancers, an epic, bloody climactic battle featuring machine guns and artillery, Erin grinning as he impales a French officer (Henry Brandon) on a lance, and the film's ending, where Erin, for no particular reason, shoots his only surviving sidekick Ballard (Arch Savage Jr.) in cold blood. And yet, despite all this, the violence is portrayed in a casual and frenetically enjoyable style. It's not at all difficult to see where Leone and Peckinpah got inspiration for characters like the Man With No Name, Tuco, and Pike Bishop. In this amoral world, all that matters is survival and gold, and not necessarily in that order. And, needless to say, no one can be trusted.

On a technical level, Aldrich's handling of the battle scenes and shootouts makes for rousing good fun, almost belying the message he is pushing. The final battle in particular is a well-staged bit of action. Ernest Laszlo's beautiful cinematography captures the action scenes and the gorgeous Mexican countryside in most flattering manner. James R. Webb and Roland Kibbee script is witty, quotable and enjoyably cynical, while Hugo Friedhoffer contributes a pretty good (if unremarkable) score.

Gary Cooper gives an excellent late-career performance as Ben Trane, the Southern gentleman whose mercenary instincts and ingrained chivalry come into conflict with one another. Burt Lancaster is well-cast as Joe Erin; he might grin a few too many times and chew a bit too much scenery, but given his reputation as an athletic, lovable hero his casting as the psychotic bad guy is very unsettling and effective. Reliable character actors Cesar Romero, George Macready, Henry Brandon, and Morris Ankrum turn in fine performances as the film's antagonists. Denise Darcel and the lovely Sara Montiel are well-cast as the film's femme fatales. And if you look among Lancaster's gang, you'll see Jack Elam, Ernest Borgnine, and Charles Bronson (nee Buchinsky) in bit roles.

Vera Cruz is a very entertaining film. While the pacing drags at times, particularly in the middle, its amoral, violent and cynical nature makes it an interesting ride. Beyond its status as a cinematic landmark is a damned enjoyable film, regardless of what one makes of it.

Rating: 8/10 - Highly Recommended