Sfida a Crooked Sky

When his sister is kidnapped , a young boy (Petersen) set out in pursuit Indians , leaving his parents (Clint Ritchie, Fannon) . He join forces with an alcoholic gold prospector (Richard Boone) who saves him of drowning and helps him to rescue the young girl . They are driven by an elderly Indian (Henry Wilconson) toward a location where lives a strange tribe . He must risk his own life by passing the proof of crooked sky and to avoid his sister to be killed from an arrow archer .

The film is a crossover from the ¨Searchers¨ (John Ford) , also with a pair looking for abducted daughter , and ¨MacKenna's gold¨ (J.L.Thompson) with fantastic inspiration in the rare Indians and the spectacular outdoors . Richard Boone as a drunk trapper is magnificent , he's usual in Western genre and John Wayne films (The Alamo, Big Jake, Shootist). The veteran Henry Wilconson (Last of Mohicans , Crusades, Cleopatra) is also excellent . The film gets sensational landscapes shot in Colorado River and Arches National Park , Moab, Utah . The motion picture was well directed by Earl Bellamy . He was a good professional who served in the US Navy's photographic unit in the WWII and directed more than 1600 episodes of television and catastrophe films such as : Fire! and Flood! and a sequel titled Walking tall II . Rating : acceptable and entertaining .

Against A Crooked Sky is strange viewing nowadays in that it was made before the pinheads in Hollywood decided to drastically dumb down movies aimed at children, particularly children ages ten to thirteen, reducing them to worthless comedic mind rot filled with flatulence jokes and loud flashy effects. I don't even think todays preteens would have the patience (or half of them, the Intelligence) for a movie that isn't a comedy or a fantasy!

In this, Sam Sutter watches helplessly while his sister is kidnapped by an Indian warrior. With little or no hope of recovery and all attempts to find her called off, he sets off with a drunken Richard Boone (in a fantastic performance) to find her, his only clue being a gold headband.

Although this isn't among the best westerns ever made, it's a truly entertaining outdoor adventure, the best thing about it being the developing relationship between Boone and the stubborn boy as he pushes the cantankerous old man out of his comfort zone and towards the truth about his sister's disappearance.

Against A Crooked Sky shows a strong influence of other films of the time like Little Big Man and A Man Called Horse. Like them it details strange (at least to the white man) rituals and customs, like Cut Tongue's being forced to live like a squaw and the harrowing climax, the test of the crooked sky.

Against A Crooked Sky tells the story of a young boy's efforts to save his sister who has been kidnapped by a mysterious Indian tribe that no one seems to have heard of. From the look of them they seem to be surviving Aztecs although the film never specifically says so.

Young Stewart Petersen sees his sister Jewel Branch kidnapped by this group of Indians who in the intervening years since Cortes have learned to ride horses. Although his parents certainly disapprove because they don't want to lose their surviving child either, Petersen goes on a mission to rescue Branch. Along the way he picks up a cantankerous old trapper who likes to pop a jug cork every now and then played by Richard Boone. Of course Boone just steals the film.

Boone and Petersen also pick up Henry Wilcoxon an old Indian who was living with the Cheyenne and who is known as Cut Tongue because his was cut out lest he reveal secrets of the lost tribe of which he was one. He guides them to their location where Petersen has to pass a warrior ritual to save his sister's life though it may cost him his own.

Against A Crooked Sky is a nice family film, small and unpretentious but filled with good values. The location shooting in Arizona and Utah is really superb. Petersen is an earnest and winning young performer and Boone just chews the scenery to beat the band, but that's his kind of character.

The film holds up well and I recommend it for family audiences.

I watched this movie on TV so many years ago that I cannot now be certain of all the details, such as how many times I have seen it. I still remember the theme song (that's how I found the movie, again, on IMDb).

There is nothing profound in this movie, but it is a respectable (if slightly cheesy) story about family devotion as a boy transforms into a young man. An Indian (sorry, Native American), sees the boy's sister rising from her bath in a creek, and kidnaps her. That's about as much nudity as this movie contains (we only get obscure views), which is the reason that I mention it specifically. The boy spends most of the rest of the movie trying to rescue his sister, aided only by a crotchety, old drunk, a task that overwhelms both of them. Someone must die, and the brother is determined to rescue his sister, even at the cost of his own life.

This movie has a plot just serious enough to keep the 4th - 8th graders hooked, and it's neither too violent for younger kids nor too boring for older ones. When the story begins, a brother and sister who live in the wilderness are discussing their mother's going to help another family where someone has a serious disease. She is risking her own health to help out the other family. The son says he wouldn't risk his life to save someone else's; his sister says 'I'd risk mine to save yours.' In a nutshell the sister gets carried away by Indians or some sort of tribe of savages, and her brother goes off in search of her. Along the way he meets Richard Boone who eventually helps him to find his sister. As he reaches her, the tribe of savages is about to kill her for a sacrifice. Will he save her? Don't be too positive; I'll let you watch it and find out for yourself.

The boy learns that contrary to what he said, he really would risk his own life to save that of someone else. I like the fact that this movie has a moral to it, the kind of positive thing to which youngsters ought to be exposed as they grow up. Yes, there's some violence, there's some sadness, but it's of the level that kids can take seriously yet it won't give them nightmares or make them sick. I've seen many a movie not as worthwhile as this one. No, it's not a Western classic, but it's still a good story and an introduction to the genre; after all, this country had a lot of important history in the last half of the 1800's and just seeing some approximations of that era is in itself a bit of a history lesson.