Best movie of this year hands down!

Best movie of this year hands down!

Absolutely the worst movie.

While it is a pity that the story wasn't told with more visual finesse, this is trivial compared to our real-world problems. It takes a good movie to put that into perspective.

For the first two thirds of the running time, this is an unremarkable love story-cum-western, interspersed with some rather bloody scenes of action and death which are rather surprising for the time in which this film was released. The drama is slow-paced and takes a rather long time to unfold; most of the running time is taken up with characterisation between the two central protagonists. The first is Cresta, a woman (but definitely not a lady) with bad habits, a foul tongue, and a love of the Native American Indians, which is not shared by her companion, a young, jingoistic soldier by the name of Honus Gent. The two young actors taking the lead roles, Candice Bergen and Peter Strauss, put in strong roles and in part make the viewing experience worthwhile.Although the pacing is slow, the script is witty and offers some nice wordplay between the two leads as their initial hostility turns to friendship and eventually something more. Plus, Ralph Nelson makes great use of the untamed American landscape, which is nicely shot, and there's another oddball character performance from Donald Pleasence playing a gun trader. Then all of a sudden, the film's unforgettable climax changes track as it depicts the wholesale slaughter of an Indian village by the American troops; suddenly it becomes deadly serious and often hard to watch. The gore effects are horrific and in-your-face and at this point, the true carnage and bloodshed of warfare is portrayed with guts, unlike anything ever seen before by the viewing public at the time of release. Since then, advances in special effects have resulted in far gorier films, but few share the disturbing realism of this movie's climax, which itself is based on the true story of the Sand Creek Massacre by Colorado soldiers led by one Colonel Chivington. Not a great movie, but perhaps one to remember, and a story with a moral is always one worth watching.

I first saw Soldier Blue some thirty five years ago, in a cheap exploitation theatre, and i was perhaps as shocked as the makers intended. I have distinct memories of leaving the theatre with an unpleasant taste in my mouth. Here was a film that not only didn't fear the displaying of extreme graphic violence, but indeed used it to the point of being exploitative.Perhaps some of the musical score, or the paralels with the Vietnam war are now dated, but generally it remains a powerful film that also makes you think.It is at this point that i must diverge with the great majority of the reviews here. Sometimes it seems like i have watched an entirely different film, for the film shows bluntly and brutally that the Native Americans were also capable of massacres or gang rapes, for instance. Not that it justifies genocide, but it is true nevertheless. They are not portrayed as the noble savages, that most people now like to consider them.Take the case of the Comanches, for instance. They came to the Southern plains from the north, and displaced and almost completely exterminated the plains Apaches. For two hundred years they raided Northern Mexico, and committed genocide over the population. The point is that seeing Native Americans merely as victims does not respect the historical truth. A film such as this one can make people see the bigger picture, and stop trying to rewrite History.

Soldier Blue chronicles the adventures of Honus (Peter Strauss) and Cresta (Candice Bergen), the only survivors of a Cheyenne Indian attack, as they journey across the wilderness of the old west in search of refuge. Donald Pleasance has a memorable but all too brief role as an eerily sleazy gun runner who encounters the pair,( witness his enormous teeth!) 'Soldier Blue' encompasses A life changing journey that reaches a tragic climax as they bare witness to the cold-blooded slaughter of the Cheyenne tribe. Reflecting the political climate of the time, Soldier Blue is uncompromising in its anti-war stance and its extremely graphic and savage depiction of the Sand Creek Massacre of 1864. It is dated albeit slightly witness the all too bright red paint like blood! but remains an incredible allegory.

Soldier Blue."True Blue" still goes a proverb for Americanism."OMG", "oh my gosh"... What is there to write.I haven't really "watched" the movie, I've browsed thru it and looked at the most important spots.Of course, the -- ATT. SPOILER!-- massacre at the end is the main "hanger" of the movie, and not only of this movie, and not only of movies in general.I got some funny, perhaps in fact not so funny analogy to the movie "Nevada Smith", in which -- SPOILER!-- McQueen plays an avenger of his brutally murdered mother, as well as in some modesty to "Geronimo":Movies like the ones we're talking about here show how it really was in the wild west. Compare them to just any run-along John Wayne-flick, and you'll end up realizing Wayne's quite "ok", and surely not any kind of psycho murderer, not even in any name of a military power, he is in the extreme contrary not only displayed-as, but IS also for me a kind of "poser of a hero". BUT still, what you realize is, that also Wayne, like many other western stars, have been put into a quite awkward position of mere liars.Our white history is one big lie.This movie shows it. How this dirty old general preaches after the --SPOILER:-- massacre, that the whites brought peace and order to those lands, this is just bizarre. Bizarre and inhumane and to the utmost fascist.This movie shows what already some more than hundred years ago, America succumbed to and, by the way, did again during the Bush-era from 2000 to 2008, in which two totally unnecessary, purely propaganda-wars were fought, only to bring disorder to Irak and Afghanistan, in which country the much more peaceful Obama is now really trying to help. Obama's policy is thru and thru peace and tolerance oriented. It is clear that the right has also some parts which deserve respect, but very often, they are mixed up with any kind of Nazis, KKKers and such racist and intolerant, violent groups.I couldn't watch this movie. The pain would have been too great, first identifying with the characters and then seeing them suffer so much.It is enough to HELP those people in danger. I do not need to suffer with them, if I only watch a movie, I don't really help them by watching, but by doing something for oppressed people.Frankly, I can only pluck a guitar in a good way when I have the good conscience that I did some office work, as well as political, journalist things, before.This is a super movie. Bravo. Showing how the soldiers are part of a fascist/ capitalist system, and how needless murder and rape is committed by rogues, employed by a so-called "civilized" army, and how the west REALLY was won, namely by the blood of the innocent and totally harmless and extremely indeed "civilized" ones.Look at the John Wayne western "How the west was won", and you'll get cheap jokes and probably another of Wayne's kicks in the ass of a "criminal". My gosh when will people get it. "Dancing with Wolves" was good on one hand, cuz it also shows the crimes of the west, BUT Costner only tries to make himself a hero, when he doesn't really deserve that! Many whites have tried to take the hero-role for themselves, when the ones who suffered were the Cheyenne, the Cherokee, the Apachee, the Mohicans, the Irocese, and so on. "Cherokee... TATA TATA- TATA TATA- ..marchin' on the trail of tears, who who who CHEROKEE - TATA TATA- oh! -TATA TATA-- marchin' on the TRAIL of tears, ohhh.... Wham!TATA- They lived in peace TATA not long ago.. TATA. A mighty Indian tribe... TA TA TA... but the winds of change... had made them realize, that the promises were LIES, yea... (analogy here: The movie "Geronimo" and others)So much to bear and all that pain left them in despair they had lost their faith and now they had to learn there was no place to return NOWHERE THEY COULD TURN... CHEROKEE... marchin' on the trail of tears...-- solo ....(EUROPE)Edit: Right some 2, 3 posts after this my comment, "Merklekranz" calls this movie's acting by Candice Bergen weak and disrecommends it with the pseudo argument, it would be "anti-war-propaganda". Well, YES, that it IS, anti-war-propaganda. Which is the ONLY good propaganda. Which IS no propaganda, at all. War is ALWAYS bad for all, for the rich AND the poor, for the economy, war is ALWAYS death. How this individual tries to justify ANY kind of killing is inexplainable and unforgivable. This guy hasn't learned his lesson in life. Bergen and the other guy who plays the soldier blue both play great and utter more words than just four. This guy is wrong the whole line along. WAR is the ONLY propaganda. Shocking to see some folks even try to justify extreme crimes committed by their own ancestors to people who lived in America long before the white men came with their alcohol and money and corruption and prostitution and social inequality, their class system, to speak with Marx's words. Democracy, NOT slavery, NOT war, THAT is what BLUE, what America should be. Obama is showing us how.