I love that this movie shows there are good and bad people on all sides of a racist issue, and that it's not a straight cut answer that everyone of one race is right and another is wrong. I also love that they show that angry feelings do not win over people being civil and working together for peace, and for keeping the laws that were previously established for everyone on all sides.
Though progressive at the time, 1950's Broken Arrow is necessarily dated today. It may treat Native Americans sympathetically (which for the era means they're more than barbarian yahoos), but the principals are still played by white actors in make-up, and though there's attention paid to Apache culture, at least some of it is invention. A sometimes over-narrated, old-fashioned take on true events, the movie stars James Stewart as Tom Jeffords, the man who actually offered Cochise an olive branch and tried to bring peace between Apache and "American" forces, with limited, but definite success. The big invention is the romance between Jeffords and a Native girl, the score for which would be replicated in Star Trek: The Original Series (big Paradise Syndrome vibes), but so far as I can tell, it never happened. Though the dialog often sounds "educational", it's Hollywoodized history that means well, and it probably wouldn't be as watchable without the affable Stewart in the lead role.
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wilyhawk
I love that this movie shows there are good and bad people on all sides of a racist issue, and that it's not a straight cut answer that everyone of one race is right and another is wrong. I also love that they show that angry feelings do not win over people being civil and working together for peace, and for keeping the laws that were previously established for everyone on all sides.Siskoid
Though progressive at the time, 1950's Broken Arrow is necessarily dated today. It may treat Native Americans sympathetically (which for the era means they're more than barbarian yahoos), but the principals are still played by white actors in make-up, and though there's attention paid to Apache culture, at least some of it is invention. A sometimes over-narrated, old-fashioned take on true events, the movie stars James Stewart as Tom Jeffords, the man who actually offered Cochise an olive branch and tried to bring peace between Apache and "American" forces, with limited, but definite success. The big invention is the romance between Jeffords and a Native girl, the score for which would be replicated in Star Trek: The Original Series (big Paradise Syndrome vibes), but so far as I can tell, it never happened. Though the dialog often sounds "educational", it's Hollywoodized history that means well, and it probably wouldn't be as watchable without the affable Stewart in the lead role.Dawizz
This Western would not fly in today's fake pc goodness.Bad Indians? No! It can be!