L'étalon de guerre

After a slow first half, which seems to have suffered from some heavy-handed cutting, the second half of this striking Western is a fascinating struggle between Indian and white man for the possession of a magnificent horse (the "eagle's wing" of the title). The film's two main assets are Billy Williams' magnificent cinematography and a beautiful music score by Marc Wilkinson.

Watch out also for a moving and unexpected graveside poetry reading by Sheen. This was one of the last major films produced by England's Rank Organization.

The picture tells the odyssey of a cowboy called Pike (Martin Sheen) whose partner, a white trapper , (Harvey Keitel), is murdered by Indians. Later on, he steals a white mustang called "Eagle Wing" to a Kiowa Indian. Having stolen a white mustang, he's pursued by an Indian, White Bull (Sam Waterston), who retrieves it and vice versa, going on and on a relentless manhunt .Pike pursues him to get his horse back. He then chases him to get his horse back through a long cat and mouse game . Meanwhile , the Indians attack a stagecoach with passengers (Stephane Audran and John Castle as a priest whose role was offered to Trevor Howard) and abduct an attractive girl. A Mexican posse (Enrique Lucero , Claudio Brook ) set out to track down the savage raiders . The west, the way it really was, before the myths were born!.

Solid western with great loads of action, chases and violence. From movie initiation when happens the horse robbing until the moving final, the fast-movement and western action-packed are continued . The pic is a crossover of various films , the white woman kidnapped by Indians just like ¨The Searches¨ (by John Ford) , the battle against nature from ¨Man in the wilderness¨ (Richard C. Sarafian) and ¨Jeremiah Johnson¨ (Sidney Pollack) and obstinacy and stubbornness between two merciless enemies who fight with no rest such as ¨The duelists¨ (Ridley Scott). The magnificent main cast is formed by an excellent Martin Sheen (Apocalypse now) as tough and two-fisted rider obsessed to recover the slim and graceful horse. Sam Waterston (Killing Fields) in a rare role as Comanche is very fine, as well. Sensational supporting cast featured by European actors, -this is a British production by Rank Organization- such as : Stephane Audran (Claude Chabrol's muse) and John Castle (Lion in Winter) as the priest. Besides , Mexican actors (Jorge Luque , Claudio Brook, Enrique Lucero, Jorge Russek), because being set in Mexican frontier and shot in Durango, Mexico, that's why some known Mexican actors were hired . Splendid cinematography by cameraman Billy Williams, it is wonderfully shown on spectacular landscapes . Lively and thrilling musical score by composer Mark Wilkinson.

The motion picture was well directed by Anthony Harvey (Lion in Winter). However , the picture was a flop and barely obtained money and failed really at box office; nowadays , being better considered than the past when it premiered. Rating : 7/10 . Above average Western , it will appeal to Martin Sheen fans .

8+ points for a take on a fresh and probably-kinda-maybe-perhaps-was look into back 'then'. American Indians quite probably stole more than killed (I doubt they were unusually bloodthirsty)...who really knows. Nice slower and somewhat uncommon pursuit... and the way things develop are not patterned which means it has a unique and lovely pace. I found this film to be most interesting. Thankfully not another mindless shoot em up. I thought this film would suck at first, but *wow* I wound up getting wrapped up and being entertained, this is why we have cinema... nice treasure... good job! I have hopes nobody dissects this film. When the entire movie unfolds I experienced many unique twists, impossible to determine what will be next. The characters are entirely human and have either honor or not... passion or not... forgiveness or not. Wound up loving the White Horse, the Indian, Sheen... even the damned desert was great. All good.

The mere presence of Sam Waterston as an Indian, is enough to put this movie in the must-see category. He is both beautiful and very subtle, with no lines whatsoever. He is tender with his kidnappee, and yet we can see he is among the proudest of all young Indian Men. Martin Sheen is just a dumb cluck who decides to challenge Waterston (White Bull) for a gorgeous white horse. Other sub-plots are really unnecessary. I don't understand the part played by Caroline Langrishe, as the poor girl who White Bull kidnaps...I don't know how she keeps her hands off this beautiful Indian man! It's a lot of fun, though; especially if you're a Waterston fan. Man, he looks GOOD in this one!!! Harvey Keitel's role isn't even worth mentioning, to tell the truth! But, rent it and enjoy! Actually, I do believe that if the music score was better, it would've been a more dramatic film...the music is so bad, it's distracting. Still - there's Mr. Waterston!

This splicing of THE SEARCHERS is one of the weirdest films I've ever seen, filmed by a Briton in a strange, unfamiliar Mexico. It's often said that the best films about America are made by foreigners, who can approach the familiar with an outsider's eye. But this crackpot film is something else. Though set ostensibly in post-Civil War America, this isn't an America recognisable from myth, cinema, TV etc. The film has an air of timeless fable about it, while dealing specifically with Western mythology.

Director Harvey uses the title horse as a focus for interconnecting stories, all dealing with the traditional Western clash of the primitive and civilisation. The former seems to have the upper hand. The vast scrub and desert of the film's landscape is unbroken, ripe for allegories of the mind. The only brief sites of civilisation are a stagecoach of missionaries and landowners, and their hacienda, from both of which derive behaviour that is anything but civilised.

The basic story intercuts three stories. In one, an aimless deserter, Pike, having lost his trading partner, steals a miraculous horse, Eagle's Wing, so-called because of its grace and speed. In the second, an Indian, White Bull, owner of this horse, waylays a stagecoach, and kidnaps one of its female occupants. In the third, the Spanish men sent to find her ignore this quest in favour of a murderous, plundering spree.

Although a revisionist Western, the treatment of the Indian is problematic. Unlike Pike, his character is never explained, forever inscrutable, denied a voice, except for an excruciating snatch of song. When he's not a strange Other, he's a symbol, whose role isn't entirely worked out - at one point a savage brute, at another he epitomises nature and freedom.

But Pike notes at the beginning that the film will attend to the period of primitivism before civilisation. In many ways the film resembles 2001 - A SPACE ODYSSEY, especially its opening sequence. Part of the film's power lies in the connections made between the three disparate characters, forcing us to view the mythic struggles and quests in a different light. Indian culture and Catholicism is linked by superstition, ritual, greed and murder. Both Pike and White Bull are musical and alcoholic. White Bull is demonised by both Pike and the abductee as a 'bastard', unwittingly revealing the tactic of illegitimacy used by colonising whites who infantilised the natives, becoming themselves 'necessary' fathers.

Unlike a traditional Western, concerned with making history, civilisation, and progress, this film is a double detective story, interrogating the past, tracks, remains.

What gives this film its remarkable uniqueness, I think, is, despite Maltin's racism, its Britishness. The climactic stand-off is more like an Arthurian joust. The film itself bravely eschews dialogue for the most part, creating the kind of visual and aural tapestry Malick missed in THE THIN RED LINE, and something few Hollywood directors would have dared. The existential doubling and quest motifs are more European myth than American (resembling another British Harvey Keitel movie, THE DUELLISTS).

Most astonishing is the use of nature. Most Westerns use landscape as an awe-inspiring backdrop: there is little sense of actually living in the West. In many ways, EAGLE'S WING is like a Powell and Pressberger film, with nature a powerful, pantheistic character in its own right - alive, dangerous, hostile, beautiful. There is a sublime scene reminiscent of A CANTERBURY TALE, when jewellery left as a trap by White Bull in the trees is suddenly blown in the wind: there is a haunting, tingling, magical, thrilling effect more reminiscent of the Arabian Nights than a horse opera. Heartstopping.