Ulzana's Raid

Ulzana's Raid is a brutal 1972 Western starring Burt Lancaster, Richard Jaeckel and Bruce Davison. It was directed by Robert Aldrich based on a script by Alan Sharp. The film's bleak and nihilistic tone, as a troop of U.S. Cavalry chase after an elusive and murderous Chiricahua Apache raiding party, is allegorical to the United States' then participation in the Vietnam War. However, like other revisionist 1970s westerns, it treats Native American... more

Ulzana's Raid is a brutal 1972 Western starring Burt Lancaster, Richard Jaeckel and Bruce Davison. It was directed by Robert Aldrich based on a script by Alan Sharp. The film's bleak and nihilistic tone, as a troop of U.S. Cavalry chase after an elusive and murderous Chiricahua Apache raiding party, is allegorical to the United States' then participation in the Vietnam War. However, like other revisionist 1970s westerns, it treats Native Americans as the victims, fighting to maintain their culture in the face of continual European expansion. Following continual mistreatment by agency authorities, Ulzana, who is known as Josana, breaks out of an Arizona Indian reservation with a war party. Soon news reaches the local military outpost that the band of Apaches have begun to kill settlers and homesteaders in the district. Wiley U.S. Army scout MacIntosh (Lancaster) is given the job of finding Ulzana for a troop soldiers led by a green, inexperienced Lieutenant Garnett DeBuin (Davison).... less