A white woman on her way to be married and an army private are the only survivors of a Cheyenne attack on the paymaster's wagon of the U.S. Calvary. She's a Cheyenne sympathizer, having spent two intimate years living with the tribe, and soon learns that Calvary soldiers--including her fiancé--are about to stage a surprise attack on an Indian village. A rocky western, though in many ways a surprisingly standard one, with two protagonists who banter back and forth like a grown-up Tom Sawyer and Becky Thatcher. However, the man-woman dynamics and survival techniques along their episodic journey back to the fort are eventually upstaged by the filmmakers' desire to Make a Statement, one filled with righteous anger. Buffy Sainte-Marie's title song quivers with barely-contained emotion, letting the audience know what it's in for. Screenwriter John Gay, adapting Theodore V. Olsen's book "Arrow in the Sun," is intent on showing history "as it really happened," yet his dialogue covers the basics ("Put into your minds the abominations of these godless barbarians! Murder! Rape! Torture! When you think of your fallen, butchered comrades, ask yourself, 'are we going to give the Cheyenne the same mercy?'"). Gay and director Ralph Nelson want audiences to get riled up, take a stand, raise a fist into the air--and not just on the basis on the much-discussed final massacre on the Natives by the Calvary (Natives, by the way, who were waving a white flag), but on speeches that portend to show what ignorant savages and hypocrites Americans were/are. Their film was probably meant to mirror the Vietnam headlines at the time, but by depicting bloody violence as a means to ending bloody violence, one may find the filmmakers' stance a little shaky (it was produced by sensationalist Joseph E. Levine, after all). Peter Strauss and Candice Bergen aren't a terribly interesting twosome--especially when things turn romantic-- but Bergen doesn't cancel herself out of the trying dramatic circumstances (as she typically did in her early performances). Her heart is in this material--everybody's is, we are to assume--and yet her characterization rings false...and the harder she tries, the worse the results. ** from ****

Don't want to write to much. I cant give this movie lower than 7 because it shows how the west was really won and it accuses the patriarchal Americans of today. But it had 0 entertaining potential. I tried to sympathize with the protagonist but i really couldn't. Also the plot was really slow at times and sometimes i was close to fall asleep. But like i said the ending was great and i don't have any point of criticism concerning the acting. After all it was a pretty good movie, that sometimes annoyed the **** out of me. I still recommend it for people that want to see some sad true stuff about American history. ( sorry for my bad English )

This controversial Western was the first to portray white men as savages and Indians as peaceful. Bergen is lovely and effective as a white woman sympathetic to the Indians. Strauss is such an unbelievable wimp that he whines that Bergen is showing too much skin and gets freaked out when she snuggles up to him to keep warm. With most of the film playing like a romantic comedy, the shift to repellent violence in the last act is jarring. The previous year, "The Wild Bunch" had raised the bar on screen violence, but this film takes it to another level in depicting the massacre of women and children by the cavalry, a scene where everything is ridiculously exaggerated to make the point about white man's savagery.

I saw this movie in high school and just watched it last night on Netflix streaming. A very powerful movie with one of the most violent and gruesome climaxes ever filmed (based on the 1864 Sand Creek massacre). Despite some inconsistencies (it's a work of fiction inspired by real events), this movie brings home the dark side of humanity, war and US imperialism.So what has really changed in over 100 years? Judging from our interventions in the Middle East, not a whole lot. This is a must see movie for anyone who is on the fence about their anti-war beliefs and wanting to support a government who commits these types of atrocities with our tax dollars that they take from us through coercive means.OK, enough of my radical, libertarian diatribe here. One suggestion. Don't eat anything while watching the last 20 minutes or so of the movie. (Is that a spoiler? I don't know but I labeled as one)