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Sergeant Rutledge [VHS] 
Actors : Jeffrey Hunter, Woody Strode, Constance Towers, Billie Burke, Juano Hernandez
Director : John Ford
Studio : Warner Home Video
by Warner Home Video
Release Date : 1994-07-22
Publisher : Warner Home Video
Availability : Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Number of Items : 1
EAN : 9786302751154
UPC : 085391227236
Avg. Customer Rating: (based on 10 reviews)
List Price : $14.98
Our Price : $21.90
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John Ford western classic |
Ex-pioneering footballer Woody Strode, gives a powerful performance as top sergeant of U.S. cavalry troop 9 Braxton Rutledge, stationed in Arizona territory in the 1880's, in John Ford's underrated "Sergeant Rutledge". Rutledge, a proud, brave and heroic soldier and ex-slave has been unjustly accused of a double homicide and is standing for a court martial. His long time comrade Lt. Tom Cantrell played by Jeffrey Hunter is acting as Strode's defense counsel.
Braxton is a member of the celebrated Buffalo Soldiers, an all black squadron known and feared by the troublesome Apaches who inhabit a nearby reservation. Using flashback sequences, we see the actions that brought Strode to the predicament he finds himself in. Constance Towers playing Mary Beecher, returning from the east to be reunited with her father unwittingly runs smack into this drama and serves as a defense witness for Strode. Billie Burke appears in her last significant movie role as the wife of the commandant the comedic Mrs. Fosgate.
John Ford does well in depicting the struggles felt by the black soldiers, emancipated years ago, to be accepted with equality in the U.S. army. Strode highlights this point with a moving soliloquy as he testifies in his own defense. |
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Buffalo Soldiers |
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Too many Americans are still ignoirant about the role of the Black "Buffalo Soldiers" that did a great deal to tame and build the West. This is a very good movie with stout portrayal of the position the black soldiers were in, fighting the Indians on the plains and their own fellow soldiers and the prejudicial system of the day. As a white American and combat vetran who fought beside black Marines, I am not only proud of the history these black Americans wrote, but of the way they wrote it. See the movie. It's well done and is definately worth the effort. |
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A great choice for DVD |
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This is surely a great title for a DVD release. It's no doubt one the best films by Mr. John Ford. The story is thrilling and remains undated. The battle scenes are great fun. It comes after "The Seachers", in importance, among other great Ford's films. Finally, if that's not enough, just the sight of Jeffrey Hunter in uniform and his fantastic set of blue eyes in Widescreen, would be worth buying two copies. Can't wait! Bring it right now! |
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A courageous film |
What stands out for me about this film is not simply that it deals with racial prejudice at a time when blacks were still struggling for their basic civil rights (there were at the time other films that already dealt with this racism), but rather that it unflinchingly confronted perhaps its most sensitive and poisonous manifestation, namely the fear of whites, especially white males, of the black man ravishing the white woman. In this film, we are set up with the classic stereotype of such fantasies, young, blonde and virginal, and then confronted with the fear and hatred that the accusation against the benighted Sergeant Rutledge of having committed a brutal rape and murder against such a victim evokes in all of its raw ugliness. Moreover, I think that the film is still relevant in this regard in that it suggests that we should ask ourselves how much of a role this fantasy continues to play in the racism against the black male that remains today.
Although I do not consider this to be one of Ford's greatest films, it was, especially for a major and established film director like Ford, a profoundly courageous undertaking. |
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A cavalry film with a twist... |
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Director John Ford's strident civil rights drama, set among a troop of African-American "Buffalo Soldiers" in the post-Civil War frontier, is more than a little heavy-handed, but has its heart in the right place. Woody Strode plays a veteran cavalryman falsely accused of molesting a white woman, and facing a legal lynching at the hands of a kangaroo court presumably typical of the times. The script is relentessly one-sided, but is aided by an innovative narrative structure, with "Ran"-like flashbacks that lead backwards to the whole big picture that absolves Rutledge (yet still may not be enough to save his life). Strode, typically stolid and reserved, coolly unfolds his character's emotions, coming to a rousing crescendo at the film's end. Interesting Hollywood "issue" film made as the Civil Rights Movement was still doing a slow simmer in the American South. |
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