Soldier Blue

1970

Action / Drama / War / Western

20
Rotten Tomatoes Critics - Rotten 71% · 8 reviews
Rotten Tomatoes Audience - Upright 71% · 1K ratings
IMDb Rating 6.9/10 10 7104 7.1K

based on novel or book attack massacre private wild west technicolor

Plot summary

After a cavalry group is massacred by the Cheyenne, only two survivors remain: Honus, a naive private devoted to his duty, and Cresta, a young woman who had lived with the Cheyenne two years and whose sympathies lie more with them than with the US government. Together, they must try to reach the cavalry's main base camp. As they travel onward, Honus is torn between his growing affection for Cresta.

Director

Ralph Nelson Photo
Ralph Nelson

Top cast

Dana Elcar Photo
Dana Elcar as Capt. Battles
Ralph Nelson Photo
Ralph Nelson as Agent Long
Candice Bergen Photo
Candice Bergen as Kathy Maribel 'Cresta' Lee
Lance Hool Photo
Lance Hool as Guard
720p.BluRay 1080p.BluRay 2160p.BluRay
951.49 MB
1280*544
English 2.0
NR
Subtitles us  
23.976 fps
1 hr 52 min
Seeds 4
1.81 GB
1920*816
English 2.0
NR
Subtitles us  
23.976 fps
1 hr 52 min
Seeds 13
5.2 GB
3840*2160
English 2.0
NR
Subtitles us  
23.976 fps
1 hr 52 min
Seeds 8

Movie Reviews

Reviewed by Tweetienator 7 / 10

A Journey Indeed

What starts as a rather funny journey of Peter Strauss and Candice Bergen teasing and fighting each other, ends in a massacre of an Indian village shown in - for that time - very graphical and violent pictures, even a little gore. I like the movie because of the chemistry between both actors and find the mix of comedy and cruel war scenes not out of order - Little Big Man, starring Dustin Hoffman, coincidentally also published in 1970, got a similar mix. I guess the absurdity of war, the Vietnam War still raging, was one of the main impulses to make such a blend - how should one survive such mad times and still safe his soul without humor? Soldier Blue: funny and sad at the same time.
Reviewed by Theo Robertson 7 / 10

One Of The Most Bizarre Movies To Be Made By An American Studio

I recall sometime in the late 1970s a film called SOLDIER BLUE being broadcast on ITV . It was on past my bedtime so unfortunately I never saw it but I distinctly remember my parents discussing it the next day and how shaken they were by the amount of violence the movie used in showing a massacre against the Indians at the end . As years passed I have heard how this movie has become a cult classic and how it was an allegory on American involvement in South East Asia and being something of a fan of this type of movie I looked forward to seeing it . Unfortunately it's not a film that appears on the TV schedules and when the BBC broadcast it tonight I think this was the first time it'd been broadcast since my parents saw it nearly 30 years ago I must confess while I was watching it I was in something of a state of shock , not so much because of the violence ( I'll come to that in a moment ) but because it's a truly bizarre movie . You can just imagine Joseph Levine scratching his chin while reading several scripts on his desk featuring different genres and deciding that he's going to make a movie featuring bits and pieces from all of them so we have 1 ) A love story between two protagonists where opposites attract 2 ) A couple hiking in the great outdoors being kidnapped by a sadistic thug and having to run for their lives 3 ) A standard western that borrows ideas from THE SEARCHERS 4 ) An ( Anti) Vietnam war movie that's the perfect antidote to THE GREEN BERETS All of these are incorporated into SOLDIER BLUE and I'm afraid that it doesn't really work . Can you believe that if this was an unsolicited script arriving on someone's desk that it would be produced ? It's like watching clips from several movies edited together , edited together very well I might add , but still edited from other movies . Thus we see a calvary platoon massacred early into the film while the next hour is devoted to two people wandering around the wilderness not liking one another but finding themselves falling in love . These scenes are like watching a star vehicle for Rock Hudson and Doris Day if you ignore the leftist / rightist diatribes As for the violence , it's probably as violent as the stuff Peckinpah was doing at the time with slow motion death scenes where people spurt blood , a cinematic violence that hasn't dated very well in the 21st Century since it appears clichéd . There is one slight difference and that is director Ralph Nelson doesn't shy away from showing innocent children getting shot down , even in 2005 the massacre scene still carries an impact and the impact would have been bigger still if the Indians hadn't been shown massacring a Calvary unit earlier , but I guess when discussing what was happening in 'Nam the movie wants to have its cake and eat it It's impossible not to discuss SOLDIER BLUE without mentioning Candice Bergen as Cresta . Men of a certain age have confessed how their ideal woman would be Bergen in this movie and I can certainly see their point , it's not just Bergin's physical presence but the written character too . Obviously Cresta is a total anachronism but she's a very memorable strong woman , a sort of hippy chick fused with Emma Peel and along with the Indian massacre Cresta is what people remember most about the movie . Peter Strauss as Honus seems a bit too old for the role and the part should have gone to a younger actor while Donald Pleasence seems to have wandered in from another movie This is a movie that I have wanted to see since I heard about it many years ago and after seeing SOLDIER BLUE I still don't know what to make of it . It's certainly a very strange film that's heavy handed and got perhaps too much to say for itself . It's like watching a Walt Disney movie spliced with an exploitation movie , in short it's one of the most bizarre movies a Hollywood studio has produced and that alone makes it worth watching
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