For more of my movie reviews, click here to follow me on Letterboxd.
SOLDIER BLUE (1970)
Rating: 2 out of 5 Stars
This might be the most tonally confused Western I’ve ever seen.
In a written preamble, SOLDIER BLUE announces its self-important aims to portray violence and war in a realistic way. After a well-staged opening battle, the movie moves without reason into comedic territory. Candice Bergen and Peter Strauss, two good actors who weren’t good yet, lead what turns into a buddy comedy set in the savage west. At times, it even resembles a rom-com! And the two actors are fed bad dialog that isn’t aided by over-the-top performances. Sean Connery hadn’t taught how Bergen how to act yet (he did on THE WIND AND THE LION). Just look at her work in another Western, BITE THE BULLET, a few years later to see a completely different actress. Strauss doesn’t have enough grit here and just comes off as a puffball.
As unenjoyable as the comedic road movie is, it gets worse when the filmmakers decide to get self-serious again. The climax, a big massacre based on historical events, is clearly intended as a political statement. If they wanted to make a Western commentary on the Vietnam war, they shouldn’t have discredited their own movie by writing more than half of it as a silly romp. The violent ending is extreme in the worse ways, a low budget blood bath of decapitations, breast cutting, and rape. It doesn’t pack any punch because the filmmakers don’t earn it. And then that last scene… were they trying to make a dark satire? If so, they missed the target by a mile!
Watched on Tubi
