While I enjoy this movie very much it has to be said that the history portrayed has been embellished a lot. Polonsky, a victim of anti-communist black-listing, decided to make Willie Boy a hero fighting against the suppression of racist, uncouth white capitalists. The real Willie Boy was very quiet and shy but was also known among the Indians for having an irrational and violent temper. Willie got his whiskey from another Indian who stole the bottle from out of a bunkhouse, not from whites after participating in a bar fight. He did not run away with his lover after being confronted while they were making love. She was terrified of him and he kidnapped her after shooting her father in the face while he slept. He later shot Carlota in the back either when she tried to escape or because she was slowing him down. The only real relevance to the proximity of the US President was that it also meant there was an over abundance of newspaper reporters near San Bernardino and Riverside who sensationalized the chase not even knowing that Willie Boy was already dead before most of them had even heard of him.The true story of the manhunt (or at the least the closest to the truth as it was based on eyewitness and second-hand accounts from the remaining witnesses) is The Last Great Manhunt by Harry Lawton, the book TTWBIH is based on (Lawton even changed the title to that of the film). Years later a couple of politically correct college professors wrote articles claiming Lawton's book was all wrong and Willie Boy was a hero, even going so far as to suggest Carlotta was killed by the posse. Lawton sued and showed his meticulous research of historical archives and interviews with witnesses. The professors later were forced to print a retraction as part of a settlement.

Conrad Hall's photography turns the harsh, hostile Mojave Desert into the kind of place in which some entrepreneur might build a high-end spa, or a "land developer" might set up a nice, gated community for retirees, with streets that have names like Happy Trail and No Problem Drive and Party Time Cove. Or, come to think of it, a nice strip mall with tony shops like Vuitton and Starbucks and Banana Republic would do nicely.Sadly, that's what's been happening since the events described here took place in 1909. Dusty little towns like Banning and Lancaster are now sprawling environment engulfers but I digress.Robert Blake is the Paiute Indian, Willie Boy, who kills the white father of his girl friend, Katherine Ross, and takes off with her into the desert, which Hall captures as a rather benign place with towering Washingtonian palms creating a shady oasis, the breeze whooshing gently through the fronds. There is an abundance of springs and other sources of water.I guess I'm dwelling on the environment because it's just so damned pretty, while the people in the story are all kind of crass. Robert Redford is Sheriff Cooper ("Coop") who pursues Blake and Ross from one picturesque place to another. Redford's posse is made up of diverse types, as posses tend to be in such movies. One is a hardbitten old Indian killer, Barry Sullivan, who joins the posse because he "enjoys" it. It's just like the old days, fightin' the Comanche.Redford himself is taciturn, sympathetic to Blake, and a reluctant hunter. But when Katherine Ross's body is found with a bullet through her heart, he's compelled to track down the worn-out horseless Blake and, finally, shoot him in an act of suicide by Sheriff.This was directed by Abraham Polonsky, one of the famous blacklisted writers who returned from exile. Having been persecuted doesn't automatically turn you into a genius but in this case it's not badly done. Nice shots of Robert Blake running full tilt across the sand, rifle in hand, leaping creosote bushes as if they were hurdles on a college track.Polonsky's loyalties are clear enough. "What did I do to them?" asks Blake, referring to the white folks. "What did any of us do?" Well, the Paiute were never particularly brutal, not like the Mojave Indians. They didn't have to be. There was enough water around the Colorado River that they could afford to be farmers rather than warriors. Ira Hayes, one of the heroes who raised the flag on Iwo Jima, was a member of the neighboring Pima tribe.Polonsky, thank God, doesn't revel in White Guilt. The audience is made to feel sympathy with Blake and Ross, if only because these are two lovers on foot being chased by a horde of horsemen who don't understand them and don't want to understand. But that, and a few remarks here and there, are about as far as it goes. If you didn't know Polonsky had been blacklisted, you'd classify this as a more or less typical example of 1960s antinomian values. It's no more propagandistic than dozens of other films that came out of the same period.And what it finally boils down to is an exciting and ultimately tragic chase movie. The covert message will be happily unnoticed by most younger viewers, and easily ignored by the more sophisticated. See Willie Boy run. See handsome Coop, the epitome of handsomeness, dodge bullets among the stucco-textured rocks. Look at the enthralling beauty of the natural landscape, free of giant tarantulas and mutated ants.

I consider Robert Blake's performance in this movie to be one of his best, and this comes from someone who has always thought he was a fine actor. Robert Redford, too, shines here as the sheriff, and almost all the supporting cast keeps up with the two male leads.Blake's character is a Paiute Indian who is the object of a manhunt which is sensationalized by the press because of its concurrence with a visit by President Taft. The sheriff is pressured into hunting down the Indian and the girl he loves but whose father has forbidden the match.It's a good solid early-1900s Western with much better-than-average acting. But it's not so much an action film as it is a character study -- of Blake's character and, to a lesser degree, Redford's. It brings to life the racism and exploitation that white Europeans brought with them to America.

This is a film that tries too hard to be 'worthy', convinced that it conveys some deep message about the culpability of the White Men who colonised the American West at the expense of the Native American Indians. But, as the Haliwell's film guide puts it, it ends up being 'boringly predictable', with its fashionable downbeat ending and cast of bigoted and unsympathetic characters mistreating each other and creating a situation that will inevitably only lead to tragedy. The actors are all fine, the photography is at times excellent, but we are not made to feel for the characters- we can see the outcome way before it happens. Thus, the final confrontation between Sheriff Coop and Willy Boy had no suspense factor for me- and I didn't care when either he or the Katharine Ross character (no, she did NOT look like an Indian!) died. A much better western that is'revisionist' in its attitude to the Native Americans are 'Little Big Man'. Watch that instead.