Review by planktonrules

"Sitting Bull" is a film that shocked me. For a biopic/western, it's actually much closer to fact than I would have suspected. It also is much more sympathetic towards the Sioux nation than many westerns....and is well worth your time.

The story revolves around an officer who has been demoted. Bob Parrish (Dale Robertson) is not your typical cavalry officer, as he thinks that the American government should respect and treat the natives much better than they do. As he put it, 'they just want to live and raise their families'. But folks like General Custer and the rest give him a lot of guff and they seem to follow the old axiom, 'the only good Indian is a dead Indian'. What's to become of him and his mission to work WITH the natives instead of AGAINST them?

It is ironic that not only did Iron Eyes Cody appear in the film as Crazy Horse, but he was the consultant to the production about native culture. Only later in life did folks learn that Cody (the most American Indian looking guy on the planet) was actually an Italian!! But you can't blame the film....at the time everyone thought Cody was exactly what and who he pretended to be! But he and the filmmakers STILL got so much right in this one...and the movie holds up far better than most from the genre*. Well worth seeing and an excellent picture in so many ways.

*For the worst possible depiction of this same story, try "They Died With Their Boots On". While the cast was incredibly impressive (with Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland), the facts are pretty much tossed out the window and Custer is depicted as a great man...not the incompetent he actually was.