ChanBot i must have seen a different film!!

InspireGato Film Perfection

Huievest Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.

Grimossfer Clever and entertaining enough to recommend even to members of the 1%

Richie-67-485852 Most excellent Western with a unique set of ingredients all designed to entertain and give rise to several emotions. This one has so much going on too. Indians, their culture, US Calvary, horses, dust, whiskey, civil war, forts, good and bad guys and a love story all done very well. This movie has part Last of the Mohicans, The Naked Prey and a mix of several other familiar themes scene in many Westerns over the years. Their are several highlights worthy to mention. The feelings of the South after losing the war dialog is potent and accurate so listen up. Great scene of Lee surrendering to Grant (with tears) and respect on all sides. then there is the Indian way, their beliefs and point of view. If that is not enough, the US Calvary wants to develop the West and set up forts and approaches the subject humbly. This movie had me riveted to the screen as there was so much going all entertaining that I didn't want it to end. Even the end music played out very well helping you to accept the ending. Good movie to eat beef jerky, a sandwich and a tasty drink. Also worth mentioning is all your favorite and familiar TV and movie stars are in this one looking and sounding good earning their paychecks as well as all being destined for long careers too. Run of the Arrow...thank you to all involved here. Mount-up

drystyx Steiger plays a Reb who won't surrender, but unlike Ethan of "The Searchers", he embraces the native American culture when he loses his own country.We get a great adventure story here, with shades of the searchers, the Naked Prey, Dances with wolves, and long before those films were made.More important, we get three dimensional characters. Even the two "heavies", one from each culture, are depicted with added dimensions. They are cruel, but their cruelty is motivated. They aren't "rebels without a cause". Indeed, what we see is "rebel with a cause" throughout.There is much one could say to endorse this film, but I feel that would spoil it. What sticks out is how many of the characters behave in "humane" ways, even when they're expected not to, from both sides. Charles Bronson and Rod Steiger portray characters you feel actually existed, who mirror each other, and come to understand each other. The way this unfolds is amazing in script and directing, as well as acting.This is action packed, but also thought provoking drama. You could put this on a stage and get much the same reaction, but it works great in cinema, too.

Spikeopath Run of the Arrow is written and directed by Sam Fuller. It stars Rod Steiger, Sara Montiel, Brian Keith, Ralph Meeker, Jay C. Flippen and Charles Bronson. Music is scored by Victor Young and Technicolor cinematography is by Joseph Biroc.As the American Civil War closes, Confederate Pvt. O'Meara (Steiger) finds he just can't bring himself to be part of the United States. With his head full of memories about what the Yankees put his kind through, and a heart full of bile, he decides to go West and live native. Here he encounters the Sioux and his life takes on a new meaning.....Run of the Arrow, and director Sam Fuller in general, has grown a sterling reputation over the decades. Where Fuller's rep as the American Primitive auteur is well deserved, Run of the Arrow's is not. It seems that the themes at work, and they are strong and potent, have made many forget the glaring flaws in the production.Churning away in the screenplay are themes of nationalism, identity, loyalty and racism, with the dialogue well scripted, but these themes are hardly presented as complex issues. Literally overnight O'Meara has a grasp on Sioux customs and language, with the Sioux not afforded any characterisation outside of O'Meara's musings (the authoritative voice after one day of going native!) and a brief scene where Blue Buffalo (Bronson) bizarrely accepts the Christian faith is the same as the Sioux faith. Ultimately the presentation of the Sioux is so one dimensional it's nigh on impossible to accept that O'Meara is now conflicted in his calling.Then there is the small matter of Steiger's miscasting. As some critics have fallen over themselves to laud the film as an ambitious masterpiece, they have forgotten about the lead man's misplacement. The attempt at an Irish accent is woeful, it comes off as more like an Eastern Europe and Asian mix, thankfully he gives up later in the film to give our ears a rest. But he is also physically wrong as well, we are asked to believe that his stocky frame can outrun lithe and muscular Sioux warriors, it's insulting even when taking artistic licence into account. Amusingly some critics of the time praised Fuller for fluidly tracking running feet as opposed to full bodied character, truth is it wasn't artistic intent, Steiger had sprained his ankle so Fuller had to shoot another actor running! It's just one of the many irrelevant scenes in the picture.The use of white actors to play Indians always causes friction with Western fans, sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. Here it cuts both ways, Bronson gets away with it, he looks the part, but Flippen is embarrassingly unconvincing as Walking Coyote and Montiel as Yellow Moccasin is done up like a porn version of a Sioux squaw! (voice dubbed by Angie Dickinson as well). It's hard to focus on strong thematics when Steiger is talking through a mouth full of beans, Flippen looks like he has wandered in off of an L.A. street and Montiel is making you horny with a shapely thigh! Where the film lifts itself above average is with Fuller's knack for stylised violence and the location photography of Biroc (latterly Ulzana's Raid). Officially the first film to use squibs for bloody impact of weapons, Fuller utilises this to the max, there's also some excellent flaming arrow work as well. Even though the print I viewed of the film is drab and scratchy, you can still see the great work of Biroc as he brings the beauty of St George, Utah, to Fuller's harsher human edges. While Young's score is inventive in blending Civil War and Irish tunes into the otherwise standard Cavalry and Indians mix.I consider myself a big Fuller fan, I love Forty Guns, Shock Corridor and The Naked Kiss, but Run of the Arrow has too much wrong with it to deserve the "great" reputation it has. While those trying to put it forward as being this great inspiration that Dances With Wolves copied! Are seriously barking up the wrong tree. Each has a disenchanted soldier venturing West and encountering the Sioux, from there on in, though, the films vastly differ. 6/10

bru-5 No one ever accused Sam Fuller of being a run-of-the-mill Hollywood dream merchant. Run of the Arrow is fairly typical of the noted director-writer's work, applying his thinking man's approach to a well-established genre; in this case, the western. Touching on the moral conflicts of the Civil War as well as the uneasy truce between the white man and the Native American, the movie centers on a disillusioned Confederate (Rod Steiger)trying to find his place in a world in which he has cast himself as an outsider.Fuller handles the visuals and the action sequences with as much confidence as the more intimate sequences of Steiger trying to immerse himself into the culture of the Sioux after what he feels is the humiliating defeat of the Confederate forces to the Union. While he lacks is the poetic sweep of a John Ford, Fuller is refreshingly unsentimental and takes pains to establish the subtlety of the characters and their conflicts. Still, it is by no means a perfect movie, undermined by the dreadful miscasting of Rod Steiger in the starring role. Although a highly skilled actor who has often excelled at portraying multi-dimensional, morally ambiguous characters, Steiger seems out-of-place as a Confederate renegade and his Irish brogue only calls attention to his uneasiness. Fuller barely shows any interest in fleshing out the relationship between Steiger and the Indian squaw he marries, casting a nondescript and unappealing actress for the love interest. But Brian Keith and Ralph Meeker are excellent as the Union officers, one kindly, the other oozing villainy from every pore.The movie is a natural for fans of adult, upper-scale westerns (a la The Gunfighter, Shane, etc.) while the more action-oriented buffs won't feel entirely left out either.