Run of the Arrow (1957)

☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Run of the Arrow (1957) – S. Fuller

Sam Fuller brings his blunt brisk directorial style to the Western, not his first but a particularly even-handed look at White-Native American relations during the period just after the Civil War.  Rod Steiger plays a Confederate soldier who refuses to join the United States after the war, preferring instead to head out to the Western territories to join up with the Sioux/Lakota (kudos to Fuller for recognising and explicating these two names).  After falling in with an elderly Sioux man, Walking Coyote (Jay C. Flippen), who worked for the army, Steiger finds himself captured by some young braves led by Crazy Wolf (H. M. Wynant).  They give the pair a chance to escape called “The Run of the Arrow” (they have a head start as far as the arrow can fly but then must run for their lives).  Of course, Steiger succeeds with the help of Yellow Moccasin (Sara Montiel) who becomes his wife when he is accepted into the tribe (foreshadowing Costner’s Dances with Wolves, 1990).  Later, Steiger as a Sioux man is selected to negotiate with the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers (led by Brian Keith) who seek to build a fort on a Sioux hunting ground. He finds himself opposed by Ralph Meeker’s Lieutenant Driscoll (a Union solider once shot by Steiger’s O’Meara).  As you can see, Steiger is not a perfect hero – he still stands for the South (even when Fuller’s script challenges him with reference to the Ku Klux Klan) and his decision to join the Sioux may be more a reaction to the Civil War and less clearly a love for the Sioux (although he does love his wife and the young mute boy that they adopt). Incidentally, the Sioux are led by Charles Bronson and it seems likely that most of the Native Americans are played by whites; this was likely true of the times and Fuller still manages to make his film feel more progressive than most with this problem. You can see the influence this film had on Jim Jarmusch and his Dead Man (1995), a more recent progressive Western, particularly in the relationship between Walking Coyote and O’Meara.  If only Fuller had access to better resources, this could have had less of a B-movie feel – that said, this is also one of its charms.