'Ulzana's Raid':Aldrich Directs Cast Led by Lancaster
Because film reviews in newspapers are essentially news stories--that is, reports about what happened yesterday, to whom and where--one is required to describe at least something of the plot of Robert Aldrich's "Ulzana's Raid."
However, I'll do it briefly because the very ordinary plot does not do justice to the complexity of the film itself. "Ulzana's Raid" is a Western whose conventional outlines have been rather violently and beautifully bent by Mr. Aldrich, an unreconstructed misogynist ("What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?") even when he makes movies (such as "The Dirty Dozen") dealing exclusively with men. On second thought, it may be that Mr. Aldrich doesn't really hate women. It could be that he feels they clutter up and, in effect, deny the dark side of the world where his most interesting films inevitably take place.
"Ulzana's Raid," which opened yesterday at the Forum and other theaters around town, is the story of an ill-fated flight and almost equally ill-fated pursuit, about a tough old Indian fighter (Burt Lancaster) and a callow young cavalry lieutenant (Bruce Davison) and their mission to track down an Apache named Ulzana who, with nine braves, has fled the reservation to murder, rape and find the Indian equivalent of identity. Why, the lieutenant asks his Apache scout, do Apaches kill so cruelly and wantonly? Says the scout: "Man give up power when he die. Like fire and heat."
Like many Aldrich films, including the recent "The Grissom Gang," the new film plays Russian roulette with itself, not with bullets but with ludicrous lines, and with violence that is so excessive that it comes close to self-parody. Aldrich fans tend either to be humorless (like his worst critics) or to admire (as I do) the daring with which he so consistently courts disaster by turning an ordinary story into (in this case) a winner-take-nothing parable.
Although "Ulzana's Raid" deals in the kind of narrative suspense and shock that would keep the most unsophisticated 42d Street audience awake, the film is as bleak as its Arizona landscapes. Much of the screenplay, written by Alan Sharp, depends on the pride and moral breakdown of the young lieutenant, an Eastern minister's son who is completely out of his element. Aldrich's West is a timeless place where noble motives lead to disastrous actions. Loyalties are hopelessly confused and the only possible satisfaction in life is behaving well for the immediate moment.
This Burt Lancaster does with ease, along with Bruce Davison, Richard Jeackel and the rest of the predominantly male cast. Of the three women I remember in the film, one is shot to death so she can't be raped by Indians, a second is raped and turned into a raving lunatic, and the third, the Indian girl who plays Lancaster's mistress, is seen only from the eyes up. "Ulzana's Raid" has little time for sentiment.
Vincent Canby, NY Times, November 16, 1972
http://rapidshare.com/files/313995947/Venganza_aldrich.part1.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/314083801/Venganza_aldrich.part2.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/314123066/Venganza_aldrich.part3.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/314308412/Venganza_aldrich.part4.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/314402620/Venganza_aldrich.part5.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/314470431/Venganza_aldrich.part6.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/314781518/Venganza_aldrich.part7.rar
spanish subs:
http://rapidshare.com/files/314916498/Ulzana_s_raid_.srt
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