ManiakJiggy
This is How Movies Should Be Made
Erica Derrick
By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.
Hattie
I didn’t really have many expectations going into the movie (good or bad), but I actually really enjoyed it. I really liked the characters and the banter between them.
Rainey Dawn
This is one gritty and tough film - right from the start. Capt. Richard Lance (Gregory Peck) is one hard-nosed cookie - almost dis-likable for most of the film but in the end he does show us another side of himself, a side that if came out earlier in the film it would be debatable as to if they would have survived. I think the tougher side of Capt. Lance is the side that did keep most of them alive. I get a claustrophobic feeling while watching this film because the group of men became stuck in old fort and surrounded by their foe for most of the film. Their water supply running out and time ticking away they are attacked randomly and it's in the end that Capt. Lance redeems himself to his soldiers and they are freed from their entrapment. A good film that is brutal for it's time era. 8/10
tieman64
Influenced by John Ford's "The Lost Patrol", and a precursor to Robert Aldrich's "The Dirty Dozen", Gordon Douglas' "Only The Valiant" sees a group of US soldiers attempting to defend Fort Invincible from Apache Indians. These soldiers are sketched as a likable bunch of misfits, criminals and malcontent. The Apaches, of course, are portrayed as a cartoonish horde of savages.Gregory Peck's always been a stiff, wooden actor. Here he plays Captain Lance, our stoned face poster boy for ethnic cleansing. "Valiant" was released in 1951, sandwiched between "Broken Arrow" and "Broken Lance", two of the first major westerns to portray Native American Indians sympathetically.3/10 – Worth one viewing.
Spikeopath
Capt. Richard Lance is a wronged man, he's being held responsible for the death of a much loved Lieutenant. When the chance arises for him to take a small band of men to the vanquished Fort Invincible, Lance readily takes up the challenge. Picking the men who despise him the most, and the ones he feels have major character flaws, Lance and the handful of soldiers must hold the fort from Apache attack until reinforcements arrive. Running out of water and at war with each other, it's becoming increasingly likely that this is a suicide mission from which none of them may return.Some people say this is one of Gregory Peck's lesser efforts, that it be low on production values and stilted in its execution. Not so say I, in fact this to me is a far more engaging picture than the much revered Rio Bravo eight years later. Oh for sure the Howard Hawks film is far technically superior, but I'd argue that for cast efforts and sheer entertainment value Only The Valiant wins out in the duel every time. Gregory Peck, Ward Bond, Gig Young, Lon Chaney Jr, Neville Brand & Warner Anderson each contribute greatly to make this a dramatic and involving picture. It simmers along as a highly charged character piece as we have a group of men deeply in mistrust of each other, yet interestingly they are bound by a mutual dislike of their Captain. One special sequence sees Lance (Peck at his straight laced best) assassinate each soldier's character; one is a bully, another a deserter, a drunk, a black heart, a coward and on he goes, and it's here where the film really kicks on to be a crackerjack character driven piece. The violence is pretty strong as well, director Gordon Douglas is not shy to put blood on the bones of the writing, and I dare you not to feel a rush of adrenaline as the Apache's start to screech prior to their wave of attacks.From watching these intriguing characters in a wonderfully tight situation, to the blood pumping Gatling Gun finale, this picture scores high on many entertaining levels. 8/10
silverscreen888
This is a luminously photographed and unusually well-written western by veteran creator of "Rawhide" Charles Marquis Warren. Direcxtor Gordon Douglas is its chief help in this regard. Its strong plot line can be told in a few sentences. A hard-nosed by-the- book, Cavalry officer, Captain Richard Lance, captures a leader of the Indian enemy after a massacre at a fort. He insists on bringing the man back for trial, to be sent toTucson; his commander sends another man to try to take the prisoner for trial and the patrol is wiped out. This means the leader has escaped, and Lance must now lead a second patrol--and he picks the men the fort can most spare, a company of problems-- to defend the advance fort that had been wiped out and save the command from another attack by stopping up the bottleneck pass in that sector. As Lance, young Gregory Peck is quite strong. Other in the large cast of this film which really shows life at a cavalry outpost looking like an army establishment of heterogeneous and quarreling types includes War Bond powerful as a hard-drinking sergeant, Neville Brand and Steve Brodie as troublemakers, Warner Anderson and Lon Chaney Jr. as psychological troublemakers and Gig Young, Art Baker, Herbert Heyes as fellow officers with Nana Bryant as the Colonel's wife. Even Barbara Payton as the love interest gets by in a difficult role; Michael Ansara is the captured war chief, and Jeff Corey plays the Fort's scout. There are really two great scenes in this very-well-made western--the long section at the fort before the last patrol is sent out, and that long patrol to the doomed Ft. Defiant itself. Once at that fort, Peck gets to deliver a grand speech in which at the demand of the men he has lined up for orders, he tells them each why he took them along. reading them their shortcomings one by one; they then tell them why they think he sent his best friend to die in his place take the Indian in instead of going himself-- and he proves them wrong for the remainder of the film by winning his lonely battle through intelligence and courage. The music by Franz Waxman is good, the production qualities admirable; the argument about what would happen if Lance takes the war chief in happens to be true; other than this unsolvable mistake by the central character, this is is great western. it has been a favorite of mine for fifty years.
