Sergeant Rutledge

Rating:
Summary: A great choice for DVD
Review: This is surely a great title for a DVD release. It's no doubt one the best films by Mr. John Ford. The story is thrilling and remains undated. The battle scenes are great fun. It comes after "The Seachers", in importance, among other great Ford's films. Finally, if that's not enough, just the sight of Jeffrey Hunter in uniform and his fantastic set of blue eyes in Widescreen, would be worth buying two copies. Can't wait! Bring it right now!

Rating:
Summary: Buffalo Soldiers
Review: Too many Americans are still ignoirant about the role of the Black "Buffalo Soldiers" that did a great deal to tame and build the West. This is a very good movie with stout portrayal of the position the black soldiers were in, fighting the Indians on the plains and their own fellow soldiers and the prejudicial system of the day.

As a white American and combat vetran who fought beside black Marines, I am not only proud of the history these black Americans wrote, but of the way they wrote it.

See the movie. It's well done and is definately worth the effort.

Rating:
Summary: A courageous film
Review: What stands out for me about this film is not simply that it deals with racial prejudice at a time when blacks were still struggling for their basic civil rights (there were at the time other films that already dealt with this racism), but rather that it unflinchingly confronted perhaps its most sensitive and poisonous manifestation, namely the fear of whites, especially white males, of the black man ravishing the white woman. In this film, we are set up with the classic stereotype of such fantasies, young, blonde and virginal, and then confronted with the fear and hatred that the accusation against the benighted Sergeant Rutledge of having committed a brutal rape and murder against such a victim evokes in all of its raw ugliness. Moreover, I think that the film is still relevant in this regard in that it suggests that we should ask ourselves how much of a role this fantasy continues to play in the racism against the black male that remains today.
Although I do not consider this to be one of Ford's greatest films, it was, especially for a major and established film director like Ford, a profoundly courageous undertaking.