BlazeLime Strong and Moving!

Lawbolisted Powerful

Pluskylang Great Film overall

Borserie it is finally so absorbing because it plays like a lyrical road odyssey that’s also a detective story.

glen_esq Hollywood's depictions of the Mounted Police and Canada are notorious for playing free and loose with the facts, you won't find much worse than Pony Soldier.The Arizona desert is apparently a suitable substitute for locations in Saskatchewan and Montana. History is rewritten as the Saskatchewan Cree fight a battle with the US Cavalry. The Cree are depicted as child-like simpletons, a desert mirage of a lake and paddle wheeler has them bowing and praying in awe. This piece of blarney is the plot device for Tyrone Power saving the day. I guess when you transplant a northern Indian tribe into the Arizona desert, anything is possible.The dialogue is wooden and clichéd, including the old wheeze "He speaks with forked tongue". The movie would have you believe the Cree burned captives alive. Wrong, but maybe the Arizona Cree did so.Keep an eye out for Power's magical red tunic. Amusing to see him rolling around on the ground and covered in dust, then jumping up with his uniform ready for a parade ground inspection.

bkoganbing I'm not sure, but has there ever been a film made with a less than sympathetic treatment of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police? The Mounties have done very well cinema wise and Pony Soldier is not setting any new patterns.It doesn't have to because it's a very entertaining film. The plot has a lot of similarities to Broken Arrow which 20th Century Fox also produced. Tyrone Power is playing Constable Duncan MacDonald, newly arrived at Fort Walsh and sent out on a mission to negotiate a peace with Cree Indians who've left their reserve and tangled with U.S. Cavalry south of the border. On the way back they've taken two white prisoners in a raid and Power is looking to get them back. One is Penny Edwards who catches the eye of Cameron Mitchell and he decides she'd make a good squaw for his little brother. The other is Robert Horton who's an escaped outlaw.So intrepid Mountie Power along with his Indian guide Thomas Gomez go to the camp of the Crees. Gomez is a most reluctant guide, in fact he's kind of blackmailed into making the journey. Thomas Gomez is an underrated and capable actor who deadpans some very funny lines.Two others in the cast really make this work. Little Anthony Numkena plays the Cree Indian boy who Power adopts and that turns out to be a great negotiating technique. But their affection is genuine and the scenes between Power and Numkena are some of the best in the film.Stuart Randall plays the Cree Chief Standing Bear. His portrayal is very similar to Jeff Chandler's more heralded portrayal of Cochise in Broken Arrow. In fact the Indians are not stereotyped, they are three dimensional characters here. Randall does a fine job as Standing Bear, negotiating with Power and having to contend with militants in his own camp led by Cameron Mitchell. Since Jeff Chandler had already broken the same ground with Cochise, Randall's performance has been overlooked, unfortunately so for him.Tyrone Power is a whole cloth hero here and does a fine job. One of the things that Americans don't appreciate is that the Mounties were there in large measure to protect the native Indians from white depredation. Canadians have always loved contrasting that to how the U.S. Cavalry treated the native population. Our cavalry was there on the settler's behalf. The contrast is certainly a matter of historical record, but I wonder if Canada had seen the immigration westward that America did, would their Mounties have been more like our blue coats.

NewEnglandPat Tyrone Power is the title character in this good western whose mission is to effect the return of the Cree tribe from the United States back to Canada in the name of the Queen. Of course, the Indians just want to hunt and return to their old way of life and to lift a few scalps along the way. Power is aided by a trail-savvy, talkative half-breed scout who provides droll comic relief along the way. The film has more dialogue than action, although white hostages held by the Indians lead to some tense moments for the Mountie. The officer's peace efforts are threatened by a band of hostile Indians, with most of the skirmishes coming at the end of the picture. The movie has a great cast of western character actors and the camera work is also very good.

Nazi_Fighter_David The absence of a strong story line in the screenplay alleviates the overall effect of "Pony Soldier," but as filmed against a breathtaking Technicolor panorama, Joseph M Newman's film guarantees attention for its qualities of vivid action and the interesting authenticity with which life in last century times is depicted among the Cree Indians and the Mounted Police...These sequences abound in effective atmosphere and are increased substantially by Newman's splendid choice of players (Cameron Mitchell, Thomas Gomez and Penny Edwards) to surround head man Tyrone Power (in a colorful uniform) assigned to stop a tribe of hostile Crees from going on wage war against the U. S. Cavalry...The film - free from weeds - stands out as a little gem of Technicolor beauty... It contains: a spectacular attack on a wagon train; hostages held as a pledge; enraged Indians riding into the hills to burn at the stake a beautiful innocent girl; and a battle during which a handsome hero is saved by the arrow of an Indian lad...