AllMovie

John Ford's darkly comic film, in one way a skewed version of his masterpiece The Searchers (1956), is not among his best, but it does have some laughs, an occasional thought, and an interesting performance by James Stewart. The cynicism of his character, which extends the tough cowboy persona he had developed in the Westerns of Anthony Mann, plays against his iconography. Widmark, likewise abandons his characteristic sneer as the kind of sincere character that was usually played by his co-star. Their comic, bickering friendship, the film's strongest suit, is summed up in a longish scene on a river bank, which has only a vague connection to the plot. Unfortunately, Ford seems unsure about how to handle the script's cynicism, and much of the film has a listless, pro forma quality and a surprising visual banality, suggesting that the director's ill health had taken a toll. The somewhat reactionary depiction of Native Americans as a savage Other, engulfing the humanity of its captives, is countered by a sequence implying the racism and savagery of the supposedly civilized. The celebration of community that had once been a cornerstone of Ford's work has been replaced by a sense of its fragility.