Ulzana's Raid
Tags: violence, murder

Plot synopsis:
Following mistreatment by agency authorities, Ulzana breaks out of the San Carlos Indian Reservation with a small war party. Soon news reaches the local military commander, who sends riders to alert local homesteads. Both troopers are separately ambushed; one is dragged away while the other shoots the settler woman he is escorting and then himself. The warriors play catch with his heart. The woman's husband, who stayed behind to protect his farm, is captured and tortured to death. Army scout MacIntosh (Lancaster) is given the job of finding Ulzana (Martinez) with a few dozen soldiers led by an inexperienced lieutenant, Garnett DeBuin (Davison). The small cavalry column includes a veteran sergeant (Jaeckel) and Apache scout Ke-Ni-Tay (Luke). Ke-Ni-Tay knows Ulzana, as their wives are sisters.
The cavalry troop leaves Fort Lowell and soon finds evidence of the activities of the Apache war party. The film then depicts the soldiers' reality, facing a merciless enemy with far better local skills. The young officer, shocked and then hardened by the cruelty and harshness around him, struggles with his Christian conscience and view of humanity. MacIntosh and Ke-Ni-Tay attempt to outthink and outfight their enemies, while advising the lieutenant. DeBuin cautiously accepts their guidance though remaining mistrustful of the Apache scout. Ulzana and most of his men abandon their horses to be led circuitously by two other warriors in an attempt to tire the pursuers' heavily loaded mounts. Ke-Ni-Tay notices that the trail is now of unladen horses, and Macintosh works out a plan that leads to the loss of the horses and the death of their two Apache escorts, who include Ulzana's son. The lieutenant prevents his men from mutilating the dead boy.
The raiders attack a nearby farm, burning the homesteader to death and seizing two horses. McIntosh realizes that the remaining Apaches physically and psychologically need horses and will try to obtain them by raiding the troop. The woman of the burned-out farm, instead of being murdered following her rape, has been left alive but injured so that the cavalry will be forced to send her to the fort with an escort. By splitting the troop, Ulzana hopes to successfully attack the escort and seize its horses. McIntosh suggests a decoy plan to make Ulzana falsely believe that his tactics are successful.
Ulzana's warriors ambush the small escort detachment, obtaining all of its horses and killing the sergeant and his soldiers before DeBuin can arrive with the rest of his force. McIntosh is fatally wounded. Only the woman survives unharmed though now apparently crazed by her experiences. Ke-Ni-Tay scatters the captured horses as bugle calls from the cavalry ineptly alert the Apaches to DeBuin's approach. Ulzana flees on foot as the remnants of his band are killed. Ke-Ni-Tay confronts him and shows him the Army bugle taken from the body of his son. Ulzana puts down his weapons and sings his death song before the Apache scout kills him. A corporal suggests that Ulzana, or at least his head, should be taken back to the fort. The lieutenant however orders him to be buried, a task that Ke-Ni-Tay insists on carrying out himself. MacIntosh knows that he will not survive the journey back to the fort, and chooses to stay behind to die alone.

Review: Led by the young and inexperienced Lt. Garnett DeBuin, the cavalrymen in order to survive and defeat Ulzana, must rely on the help of tough old scout McIntosh and his trusty Indian friend, Ke-Ni-Tay.Directed masterfully by Robert Aldrich (The Dirty Dozen & The Longest Yard), Ulzana's Raid is just shy of being an uncompromising masterpiece.
From the off it's evident that McIntosh & DeBuin have vastly different views of Ulzana's actions, but as the film moves forward; all manner of questions leap out, be it Christian values, racial hatred or merely imperialistic trust; all parties involved are hurtling towards the final reckoning.Burt Lancaster is perfect as McIntosh, grizzled and carrying a frame made for such a rigorous terrain.
Stark and brutal, but completely lacking the melodramatic sturm und drang of most war movies, Ulzana's Raid plays out like it was another deadly day at the office for the participants.
When asked if Ke-Ni-Tay can be trusted, McIntosh says simply but emphatically, "I trust him." At the end of the film, Lieutenant DeBuin is a wiser man than when he began his journey with Ke-Ni-Tay. As he leaves Ke-Ni-Tay to deal with the burial of Ulzana, DeBuin salutes him, with the simple address of "Scout," as he takes his leave.Ke-Ni-Tay is one of the most fascinating characters in film.
At one point Lancaster's character says "Hating the Apache is like hating the desert because there isn't any water in it." (Or something similar.) That line really sums up the movie in my view.
Robert Aldrich's savage 1972 revenge western which as harrowing now as then - a band of Apaches's have left the reservation and gone on a killing spree - Young and idealistic Lt DeBuin(Bruce Davison) is put in charge of the calvary sent out to stop them - he is joined by wily,plain speaking scout McIntosh(a splendidly grizzeled Burt Lancaster) and his trusty Apache assistant Ki-No-Tay - the chase is on to stop Ulzana before he does too much killing....
DeBuin is from devout Christian stock and is appalled at the cruelty meted out to the Apache's victim's - he starts from a point that they are no different to himself but as the burnings,rapes and torture mount he begins to question how these men could have been made in God's image.McIntosh is more sanguine about it - he respects the Apache but has no illusions about the way they operate - Aldrich doesn't shy away from the more grisly acts but its more than the usual Injun bashing - the point is made that if the white man treated them better then they woudn't feel the need to do these things - McIntosh is not so convinced and there is a factinating conversation between DeBuin and Ki-No-Tay about why the Apache kill and how others deaths give the killer power.
Along the way DeBuin has his metal tested and has to make decisions that affect the life and deaths of both homesteaders and his troops - Davison is good in the role and Lancaster is excellent as the older,more experienced man who has seen it all before but knows what needs to be done - but still brings a warmth and humanity to the character.Of course any search and destroy raiding party Western of the time can have endless Vietnam parallels - and the fine script leaves the film open to more than one interpretation.
Apache warrior Ulzana (Martinez), weary of his reservation, leads several young braves on a foray for "new smell," as Army scout Ke-Ni-Tay (Luke, in an understated, perfectly deadpan performance) describes it.
But, it also shows how soldiers are driven to perform cowardly, and equally cruel acts when retaliating, in the name of justice.And caught in the middle of this mayhem is young Lt. DeBruin (Bruce Davison) who's given the task of rounding up Ulzana (Joaquin Martinez) and his band of Apaches who left the reservation, stole some horses and began to lay a path of destruction and death across part of Arizona.
(Bruce Davison)commanding a group of soldiers , booth of them join forces on their way to track down an Apache Chiricaua leader named Ulzana(Joaquin Martinez) escaped from reservation of San Carlos.
This is the basis for this film entitled " Ulzana's Raid." It is the 1880's in the Western Arizona frontier and an unscrupulous government agent has been short-changing the tribal people of their meager meat supplies, so much so a small group of Apaches, led by a strong leader named Ulzana, (Joaquin Martinez) who with a dozen braves break out from the reservation and go on a war party to live free in the deserts.
Because theirs will be a wild and destructive raid, the fort commander assigns his chief scout McIntosh (Burt Lancaster), a young Lt. Garnett Debuin (Bruce Davison) and an Indian guide and tracker named Ke-Ni-Tay (Jorge Luke) to 'persue with all due vigor' the escaping hostiles.
When friends ask me to name my favourite 5 films this is the one that they have never heard of.To my mind it is the most accomplished western that has ever been made(although soldier blue comes a good second, It tells the story of an apache(ulzana)and his gang and their bid for freedom from the constraints of a reservation with little food and very little hope.
In 1954, Robert Aldrich directed and Burt Lancaster starred in 'Apache', a re-consideration of the negative role accorded Native Americans in the western film.
In addition, the scout played by Lancaster isn't (as he probably would be today) the 'cynical', 'world-weary' character who must redeem himself by some heroic action; rather, he's a competent professional, a man who lives with an Apache wife but who doesn't buy the 'Little Big Man' myths of the peace-loving noble savage– a hippie era antidote to the racism of 'classic' westerns that actually presented a view just as distorted as theirs.
The son of a clergyman, the young man believes that it's "an absence of Christian feeling" that's led to the situation of mutual enmity between white men and Native Americans; however, when he sees the aftermath of Ulzana's raids (for instance, a mutilated settler has a dog's tail placed in his mouth; as Lancaster wryly observes, Apaches have a strange sense of humour), he quickly swings to the opposite view, and wonders how Lancaster can have dealt with the Apache for so long without hating them.
What that ignores, though, is the brutality present in the tribal culture (at least, in that of the Apaches, who were feared by other tribes as well as by the white men); commenting on the rape of white settlers, several characters note that "they don't treat their own women much better." A culture that is based around rites of manhood (as documented in 'A Man Called Horse') and the feats of male warriors is not all that dissimilar to that of bloodthirsty white men masquerading behind Christianity, 'the American way', or simple lust for land.
Davison is eager enough to get the assignment of capturing Ulzana but after being outfoxed by the fugitive chief reluctantly defers to Lancaster and Jorge Luke, the latter who is great as an Apache scout, and turns out to be the real hero of the film.
On just such a mission is army scout Burt Lancaster trying to teach inexperienced young Lieutenant Bruce Davison, give him his baptism of fire so to speak.Ulzana's Raid is a grim and uncompromising look at the dirty business of what it took to subdue some of the Indian tribes.
He makes mistakes, but Lancaster tells him he has to live with them and learn.There is a sidebar conflict going as well between a pair of brothers-in- law, Joaquin Martinez in the title role as Ulzana and Jorge Luke as Ken-Ni-Tay the Indian scout with the cavalry.
To make this picture Aldrich needed his big director-name, otherwise I think he couldn't dare to make "Ulzana's Raid" (althrough made during the New Hollywood-era).This wasn't just another Western, it was a serious try to make a violent film with battle between the white and the native Americans, maybe with ambition to stay neutral or being distanced.
A wet-behind-the-ears Cavalry officer, Lt. DeBuin (Bruce Davison), is put in charge of the pursuit, and while he will have the final say in military matters, he will also need to defer to the judgment of McIntosh (Burt Lancaster), the veteran Indian scout who will be used for tracking.
His naïve and bias standpoint comes to the forefront, as he tries to come to grips by questioning McIntosh and his trusted Indian guide Ke-Ni-Tay.Director Robert Aldrich's grim and savage western is a lot more thoughtful in its conservative context (allegories to war --- Vietnam) than its blood-drenched images might suggest.
When the young and naive cavalry lieutenant asks his Apache scout why his people are so cruel, the man simply shrugs his shoulders and says "because that's the way they are." Burt Lancaster, in an accomplished portrayal of a white scout married to an Apache, has come to this realization long ago and has ceased being judgmental, without; at least apparently; becoming overly embittered.
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.
"ulzana's raid"is as good as any western that has ever been made savage,brutal,violent it is, but is also one terrific movie.a gem of a film by a great film director - Robert Aldridge.
a great script by an Englishman, Alan sharp i believe is his name.solid acting by all.special kudos have to go to Burt Lancaster as the tough, grizzled veteran army scout-MacIntosh.Lancaster does not look like an actor playing in a western movie.he looks the part and lives the role, as if he were an army scout in Arizona during the 1880s.
Lancaster has the best lines in the movie and and for a man who was, i believe 58 years old at the time he made this movie,he rides a horse and handles firearms like real westerner.there are 3 or 4 different versions of this movie that have been shown over the years since its release in 1972 as different distributors have cut scenes they deemed to violent and shocking."ulzana's raid"deserves to be released in a special directors cut edition with all of the footage Aldridge shot,restored,and all of the different versions combined,and of course in "widescreen" format.i heard a rumor that such a version may exist.i hope so,but if not true,please universal pictures,do justice to this great western film and lets have that widescreen directors cut special edition.one last comment.if you love western films and you have not seen "ulzana's raid".see it,they don't make them any better..
Bruce Davison plays a VERY young and inexperienced Cavalry lieutenant who is in charge of a small expedition that is out to chased down and kill the Apache, Ulzana, and his raiding party.
The film has some of the western cliches; the savvy veteran and the green officer; the white woman driven mad by abuse in the hands of the Apaches, but Lancaster is fine in the role of McIntosh, the experienced scout (the real Archie McIntosh served as a scout in Arizona, but apparently did not chase Josanie.
the other being The Searchers, of course.Bruce Davison's Lt. DeBuin could have as easily been a new lieutenant fresh out of West Point in Viet Nam. The film educates the viewer on the reality of those times and responsibilities and human responses to them.Lancaster is perfectly cast as the aging scout who has come to respect and like one of the fiercest and at that time least likable Native American peoples.
(There were two other Lancaster Westerns at about the time of this one: The Lawman, and Valdez Is Coming.) But the most fascinating and illuminating character is Apache Scout Ke-Ni-Tay, thanks to Jorge Luke's restrained acting.Indeed, it is the young Apache Scout's and young Army lieutenant's meeting, exchanges, and ultimate mutual understanding and respect - enabled and encouraged by the wise, fatherly scout, and shared by the audience - which is the crux of this film.This little-known film everyone should see, before they pass judgment on those times and places and how people there handled them.Lou Coatney.
It tells the tale of a young lieutenant Garnett DeBuin (Bruce Davison) as he is given the command to track and apprehend a small Apache war party, which has left the reservation led by their leader Ulzana (Joaquín Martínez).
Assigned to track and hunt him down is one Lt. Garnett DeBuin, a fairly inexperienced officer only six months removed from West Point well played with the right amount of naivete and curiosity by Bruce Davidson, and with a detachment aided by the Apache scout Ke-Ni-Tay (Jorge Luke) and an extremely experienced White scout named MacIntosh, more than ably portrayed by Burt Lancaster.
And when Davidson asks Lancaster's scout why he doesn't hate the Apache so much as tries to empathize with them, Lancaster's reply is so direct and to the point: "It would be like hating the desert just because there ain't any water in it." Like quite a few Westerns from the mid-1960s on, ULZANA'S RAID is a very complex film on the nature not of, say, White Men and Red Men so much as that of Man, period—the good; the bad; and, too often, the ugly as well.
If there's any film that ULZANA'S RAID resembles, it would probably be director Sam Peckinpah's 1965 Civil War-era Western MAJOR DUNDEE, which also dealt with a punitive hunt of a rampaging Apache by a rag-tag regiment of U.S. cavalry soldiers, though in that case the titular character played by Charlton Heston was obsessed with his own glory, whereas here Davidson's flaw is merely being naïve.
Richard Jaeckel, who had been in THE DIRTY DOZEN, manages a good turn as well as a cynical sergeant; and Martinez conveys a scary power to his role as Ulzana.Shot largely on locations in Nevada and southern Arizona, and with veteran cinematographer Joseph Biroc's superb depiction of the parched landscape, ULZANA'S RAID remains one of the most unsettling and subversive Westerns ever made of any era, particularly its own; and while the violence is likely to unnerve and perhaps still repel a few people, the very nature of the story makes it a hugely insightful film even to this day..
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.
The US Calvary gets their best Indian fighter McIntosh, Burt Lancaster, and his Apache scout Ke-Ni-Tay, Jorge Luke, to help them track down Ulzana and his raiders before they have the entire reservation rise up and join them.
Never seeing the savagery that he experienced in tracking down Ulzana Lt. DeBuin in fact becomes far more hateful against the Indians then McIntosh who's known the Apaches all his life!
Ulzana's men are all killed during the ambush he planed on McIntosh with him seeing that it's all over he lets himself get shot and killed by his brother-in-law who just happened to be Ke-Ni-Tay. McIntosh badly wounded in the fighting is left at his own request to die together with his men and as he takes out a cigarette and is about to have a last drag "Ulzana's Raid" goes into freeze frames and ends.One of the very few realistic westerns to come out in years that lets the chips fall where they may in how things were in the war between the White Man and the American Indian back in the late 19th century.
ULZANA'S RAID, a surehand western directed by Robert Aldrich, is one of those films that most people have never heard of – even those who confess themselves fans of the genre.
"Ulzana's Raid" is a film set in the last years of the Apache Wars (1849-1886).
The story follows a small Cavalry unit dispatched to capture and subdue a raiding war party led by the Apache Ulzana (Joaquin Martinez), whose band escaped from the San Carlos Reservation with stolen horses, and are now spreading death and destruction across the Arizona border landscape.For those of humanistic persuasion, the film places young Lieutenant Harry DeBuin (he's listed in the credits as Garnett, but that name was never mentioned in the story) in charge of the cavalry soldiers, intent on doing his professional duty, but all the while pondering the nature of Apache savagery and how one group of humans can be so vicious in dealing with another.
When it's kill or be killed, it seems like all bets would be off.For me, the most intriguing character in the story turned out to be the cavalry scout Ke-Ni-Tay (Jorge Luke), who's discourse on power and how the Apache regards it, allows DeBuin to reevaluate his notions about the Indian way of fighting.
But let me get off that subject because it's beginning to remind me of my marriage.Ulzana is dissatisfied with the treatment his tribe is receiving on the reservation so he leads his band off on a series of raids, pursued by a green lieutenant (Davison), a detail of cavalry troopers, Burt Lancaster as the weary scout, and Jorge Luke as the reformed Apache guide.
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.
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.
Based on a script by Alan Sharp, the film stars Burt Lancaster as Anglo McIntosh, a skilled tracker hired by the US Army to hunt a group of Apache Indians.