AboveDeepBuggy Some things I liked some I did not.

NekoHomey Purely Joyful Movie!

Kien Navarro Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

Geraldine The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

gordonl56 ULZANA'S RAID 1972 This is simply one of the best western films to come out of the 1970's. This Robert Aldrich directed film stars, Burt Lancaster, Bruce Davison, Richard Jaeckel, Joaquin Martinez and Jorge Luke.The film starts, when a small group of Chiricahua Apaches leave the reservation to go on a raid. The group in led by Joaquin Martinez who has grown tired of the slow death that reservation life is. They plan on a bit of killing, burning and rape.The local Army fort sends a small detachment of troopers under a junior officer, Bruce Davison, to capture or kill the renegades. Old time scout Burt Lancaster and his Apache partner, Jorge Luke are also in the mix.Ulzana (Martinez) is working his way across the desert country killing several troopers and settlers. They also enjoy a bit of rape and torture with one of the settler women. The troopers, led by the inexperienced Davison, are always one step behind the Apaches.Davison is of course all for riding hard and heavy in pursuit of Martinez and the braves. Old hand, Lancaster tells Davison that they need to out think the Apaches in order to catch them.What follows is a real cat and mouse game between the Apaches and the troopers. Lancaster and his man, Luke, manage to outflank a couple of the Apache party and run off their horses. Now the pursuit turns all the more deadly, as the Apaches need to find some remounts. Needless to say there is going to be dead on both sides.This one is a top flight duster with the cast and crew all turning in good work. The film was shot on location in Arizona.The director, Robert Aldrich is best known for, VERA CRUZ, KISS ME DEADLY, THE BIG KNIFE, ATTACK, WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE?, HUSH…HUSH SWEET CHARLOTTE, THE LONGEST YARD, THE DIRTY DOZEN and THE FLIGHT OF THE PHOENIX.The look of the film is excellent, with 2 time, Oscar nominated and 1 time winning cinematographer, Joseph Biroc at the controls. His work includes, ROUGHSHOD, LOAN SHARK, WITHOUT WARNING, THE GLASS WALL, VICE SQUAD, WORLD FOR RANSOM, NIGHTMARE and THE GARMENT JUNGLE. His most famous films are likely, HUSH, HUSH SWEET CHARLOTTE and IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE.

sol- An idealistic young officer teams up with an experienced scout to track down a group of murderous Apaches in this popular western drama written by 'Night Moves' screenwriter Alan Sharp and directed by Robert Aldrich. Burt Lancaster has the lead role of the old scout, Richard Jaeckel can be found among the ing cast and the film is shot by Oscar winning DOP Joseph F. Biroc. With such strong talent both behind and in front of the camera, 'Ulzana's Raid' is a classy production and refreshingly grisly and graphically violent for a western of its era. The crux of the story though is the young officer's growing disillusionment with his quest and gradual realisation that some people out there are simply sadistic and evil - a character arc a little too trite and formulaic to click. Bruce Davison is a solid actor in general (very effective in 'Last Summer' and 'The Strawberry Statement' only a few years earlier) but he is simply grating as the young officer here, constantly preaching his religious beliefs and constantly asking rhetorical questions in a non-rhetorical way. He seems like a child at times with his apparent oblivion to evil existing in the world and frequent claims of good existing in everyone. The film almost makes up for this with a nice subplot involving Jorge Luke as an Apache helping Lancaster and Davison in their quest with some very pronounced internal dilemmas. Some apparently regard the film as a Vietnam War allegory, but it can be appreciated allegorical connections aside, even if it is hardly a flawless production.

johnnyboyz Ulzana's Raid is war games out in the deserts of the old American West that happens to have been stretched to the length of a hundred and three minutes, a film depicting the battle between two sides vying for a territory more than it is any sort of enveloped narrative or intense character study. Imagine a team based game of Monopoly with packed groups of people on either side contesting a vaster, more open board but with the competitor's life on the line instead of large amounts of fictitious money. While we're on the subject, imagine the barren, sandy states of the American frontier as one large chess board wherein varying soldiers and troops of varying ability and rank capable only of particular things that come naturally to them move around the game zone vying for victory. While the film is essentially a series of sequences dedicated to tracking and moving and trying to work one's opponent out, veteran director Robert Aldrich just happens to have made it as gripping as it is. The respective sides in this case are, somewhat originally, the cowboys and the Indians; of a Union Army, of whom have employed an elderly tracker who's seen one too many examples of what the Indians are capable of, and the indigenous Apaches – a group led by a notoriously savage chief whose barbarism and hatred for the whites that have settled is equal only to his love for this once pure land. Shrouded in darkness, our introduction to these Apache people paints a worryingly bleak picture as to what folk will come up against, when these horrifically scarred and robotically inclined beings raid a ranch and make off with a far more human-a looking white man's horses. The antagonist in this case is the titular Ulzana (Martinez), the man leading these people; a brutal man, not a thief or a cutthroat out of nature but out of the application of colonisation to his land, a savage man but only through war.Cut to the bright, welcoming daylight of a baseball match being played between those in the Union Army within the confines of their outpost. Things are cheerier and more upbeat, especially now that we've moved away from those 'nasty' Apaches and their night-set shenanigans. A young lieutenant named Garnett DeBuin (Davison) does well to stand up to those rougher, meaner and more ego-centric as he calls the game, in spite of his young and angelic appearance. Before anything can get too out of hand, an American scout rides in from the wilderness having been called upon as an Apache expert and someone who's lived and dealt with them in past, in spite of his reluctance to agree to their nature and views. He is McIntosh, played with a gruff aplomb by Burt Lancaster; once a young and somewhat angelic actor himself who enjoyed his time standing up to those in his profession of a more hardened nature, particularly in early films such as "The Killers". Here to deal with the threat of Ulzana, McIntosh offers a stern warning to those eventually charged with chipping in with him that Ulzana is a vicious, merciless man. Indeed, "Half of everything he says is a lie, the other half just 'aint true" is the parting shot issued by the scout on Ulzana. The body of the film is this platoon of gunmen on horseback navigating the terrain in search of Ulzana and his men. The titular Indian knows he's being tracked by this group; the army don't know where he's heading and considering just how violent Ulzana can be in his recent attacks against white settlers, there is a sense of the whole thing being one giant race against time as settlers lives remain in danger. Internal clashes between McIntosh and DeBuin see two men disagree over whether some kind of truce can be formed between the whites and the natives, McIntosh's worn dress; elderly composition and rough talking tone is manufactured to be seen as the epitome of old, politically incorrect and 'wrong' headed thinking when stood beside DeBuin's younger, fresher and more broadly minded uniformed soldier. It is unfortunate, then, that the duality inherent in these two men is eventually sidestepped for an all-out war one could accuse of being episodic, but there is enough of a grip on the audience and is never one worn out by its nature in this regard.If I was surprised by how gripping the film was, given its approach, to depict a series of tracking; talking; stopping and planning, then I was even more surprised by often how tough-a film this is. Make no mistake, the scenes involving the brutality that Ulzana inflicts upon the people of the terrain are often startling and it is indeed a sorry state of affairs when we realise just how watered down mainstream cinema has become in an era of genre hybridisation and big-business that drives American genre films of the modern day. At least in the era of Ulzana's Raid, violence and solid depictions of the old west in general could make its way into a mainstream piece because the mainstream were predominantly adult. Synonymous with the death of the Western genre (because it's tough to 'vamp up' a Western with cartoonified narrative elements and numerous sub-genres) is the death of films made by adults FOR adults, replaced by frat/fan-boy driven financial opportunists who produce cinematic stinkers in a set genre for people of similar ilk. Perhaps Ulzana's Raid is a bit episodic; perhaps it isn't much more than an exploitation film and maybe it wasn't immune to criticisms of it being mainstream upon release, but it's a sure-sight better than what we get now.

Mike Gingold This movie accurately portrays the human dilemma of culture clash within the historical context of the colonisation of the Western United States. Ulzana and his Apache braves are confined to a miserable and dishonourable existence within a reservation after their lands have been seized. Rejecting the choice made by his brother-in-law to the invading army, Ulzana breaks free to wreak havoc on the settlers who have stolen the land and emasculated the warrior culture of the Apache nation. As is so often the case in history, all the characters in this movie are victims of their circumstances, there are no heroes and villains. Both McIntosh's and Ulzana's fates are simultaneously noble, sad and inevitable. An extremely thoughtful and grittily realistic portrayal of a brutal time in American history that successfully avoids sentimentality and stereotyping. Highly recommended.