Solemplex To me, this movie is perfection.

Stevecorp Don't listen to the negative reviews

FirstWitch A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

Raymond Sierra The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

Robert J. Maxwell It's 1876. The Cree Indians of Saskatchewan have crossed the US border to hunt buffalo. There is a clash with the US cavalry and Standing Bear leads his Cree back across the border, taking two white hostages. It's the task of Constable Tyrone Power in full RCMP panoply to located the Cree, rescue the hostages, and talk Standing Bear into returning to the reservation, where they will be provided with food and shelter. Standing Bear is a reasonable guy. But he has to contend with Cameron Mitchell as Konah, the young Turk who wants to kill all the white. Likewise, one of the white hostages, a bank robber, would love to kill all the Indians. How do you handle a minority that actually seems to enjoy the prospect of war and killing? It's a perennial problem and culture doesn't seem to count for much.It's an unusual Western in that it deals as much with the issues facing the Cree as it does with the problems facing Tyrone Power. Power is the protagonist, the principled central figure, but the milieu is that of the Cree, and they're no more stereotyped than any other group liable to be found in a typical 1950s feature film.Standing Bear is thoughtful, spiritual, democratic, and a man of his word. But the aggressive Konah is not shown as evil either, just mistaken in his values. Of course, he gets it in the end anyway. There must be a final shoot out in a Western and somebody has to die.The dialog gets a couple of things right. Duncan in Gaelic may very well mean "brown warrior." The Cree and the American Blackfeet actually were at odds with one another. And the talk of "medicine" was real enough -- and still is. I lived with the Blackfeet as an anthropologist and the medicine man has a social status at least equal to that of his Christian counterpart.At the same time, the dialog is stilted and "Indian-like". In the case of Thomas Gomez, as the comic sidekick, it sounds like Charlie Chan. And although the narration refers to the humiliation of the Cree's defeat at the hands of the Long Knives, the Plains Indians didn't really care much about victory or defeat. Like T. E. Lawrence's Arabs, they fought for a while and then went home when they were tired of it.The movie isn't filled with action, and I must say not all of it rings true. It's more suspenseful than thrilling, but the musical score hints at Canada's national anthem and the photography can be luscious. It's enlightening too. Canada is as vast as the US, had all kinds of Indians and still does. Yet it never went through the genocidal Indian Wars that America did. I wonder how come? Did we have more Konahs, on both sides?

alexandre michel liberman (tmwest) Pony Soldier is what you could call a Canadian western (about Mounties and which takes place in Canada) where what counts the most is the visual beauty. You have to remember this film was made before color TV, and when a lot of films where still made in black and white, so it was quite a thrill to watch the beautiful Canadian scenery, the red uniforms of the Mounties, also Indians impeccably dressed. The story about a Mountie's efforts to pacify the Indians, which had taken hostages, also flows easily, quite predictable, with no violent emotions to prevent you from enjoying the colors on the screen. Cameron Mitchell is so well made up as an Indian, that he is unrecognizable.

MartinHafer Improbably enough, Tyrone Power plays one of the first Canadian Mounties in this film. While I just couldn't picture him in this role, he was fine in the role as an interpreter sent to discuss peace with a renegade Indian tribe. The first half of the film was amazingly leisurely paced and lacked the usual level of excitement found in a Western, though the second half improved quite a bit. What I particularly liked was how the Indians were generally portrayed. Unlike earlier Westerns of the 30s and 40s, this one was much more sympathetic in its portrayal of the natives--showing them as intelligent and generally quite honorable. Also, to get past the usual dialog and accent problems, early in the film the narrator announced that Power and the Indians spoke the native language but it was translated to English for the benefit of the audience (an unusual announcement to say the least).Aside from a nice portrayal of most of the Indian, the story also featured a cute Indian lad who actually helped the story--something cute child actors rarely do! On the negative side, the overall effort, to me, seemed rather listless in places and just didn't seem like much more than a very good time-passer. Interestingly enough, I watched this movie with my wife and she really liked it--more than I did, and this is unusual since she usually HATES Westerns.

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...