Northwest Passage [VHS]
One is compelled to say, in these Politically Correct times, thatNorthwest Passagetakes a distinctly "unenlightened" view of the 18th-century American colonists' Indian neighbors. Then again, everything about the world portrayed in this early-Technicolor production is harsh: the repressive policies of the Crown-backed Boston magistrates, the expectations Maj. Robert Rogers (Spencer Tracy) has for his guerrilla warrior band, the bloodthirsty war-making by the Abenagi Indians (reciprocated in kind by the colonials), the ferocity of flood-swollen wilderness rivers, and the breathtaking, unforgiving vastness of the virgin forest in which, surrounded by beauty, Rogers's Rangers very nearly starve to death. As an action film,Northwest Passagepeaks early with a predawn, retaliatory raid on an Indian village--horrific choreography by the master filmmaker who madeThe Big Parade. But the grim march back from this mission is too harrowing to call anticlimactic. Robert Young and Walter Brennan costar.--Richard T. Jameson