The Glory Guys

I watch tons of Westerns so am no snob to watching some B horse operas, which are often really good and entertaining. This picture was pretty boring and silly. It seemed older than a film from the mid-1960s. The fight scenes were over done and the love triangle seemed to go nowhere with no winner in sight. So I turned it off. The highlight of this movie was watching James Caan. His character nuances were superb and his acting so real and remarkable. It gave me a whole new appreciation for this budding actor from 1965.

If it wasn't for the big name actors, it would've been an unreleased piece. The storyline is boring, the unneeded triple thread romance is jaded and the action scenes are abominable.

*** This review may contain spoilers *** *Plot and ending analyzed* A near-tedious film about the "great" U.S. cavalry regiments attempting to fight the native American tribes. It spends most of its time in the town and barracks, with an idiotic side story plying two dumb oafs against some beautiful woman. Most of the time is spent on idiotic chatter, oft-repeated brawls and military posturing. Unlikable recruits fill in the ranks of the unsympathetic characters. Especial to note is James Caan doing his awful impression of an Irishman. Slim Pickens, Andrew Duggan, and Wayne Rogers are just a few of the familiar faces. The battle with the native American tribes is wholly preposterous, as it has them fill in the role of "cannon fodder" and nothing else. They charge rifles, sit on their horses and five of them get taken out by the aforementioned dumb oafs. A stale and average Western.

While this is another rip on Custer's stupidity at Little Big Horn it is very well done. Starting with the competition between an army scout and a cavalry captain for a widow woman. They go about it in a semi-civilized manner, only slugging it out once. Both go noble when it comes to the woman and each says he will bow out of the others way. During the fighting with the Indians the scout comes back to aid the captain and gets killed. So I guess the field is clear for the captain. Sent out as a diversion the captain's troop survives, with casualties of course but the glory hunting general (who pushed to get there a day early) and his entire command are wiped out. Coming across the slaughter field the troop sees the approaching column of troops that are arriving as scheduled, they form up and the film then ends. Does Tryon get the girl? Who is found culpable? Who gets hung out to dry?

Great acting and based on the Custer debacle. Peckinpah does a great job with little blood and gore but great scenes of combat. I note that a viewer says he saw additional scenes so let me comment on that; I saw the movie at the drive-in my first time and the version currently on video from MGM/UA is complete. TV versions cut out one specific scene for extra commercials, the entire scene where the troop leaves the fort with no weapons and suffers a simulated Indian attack, with Duggan nearly strangling one acting Indian (about 12-15 min.)The only thing missing is the widescreen version as the video is P&S. I also saw the movie in France, dubbed in French in widescreen and the many off-screen elements show that this movie needs a WS release. Of note is the historical accuracy of the weapons and uniforms. WIDESCREEN please!

A number of people believe that if Sam Peckinpah had directed "The Glory Guys" it might have been a masterpiece. Instead we get a Peckinpah screenplay with the directing duties handed to the little known Arnold Laven and yet as it stands this is one of the finest of all Cavalry pictures even if not too many people have seen it. It's magnificently shot in widescreen by the great James Wong Howe though it's indifferently acted. None of the leads, (Tom Tryon, Harve Presnell, Senta Berger), have much charisma though it's always good to see James Caan, (with a dreadful Oirish accent) but there are sequences here as good as anything Ford or Peckinpah might have given us, be it a bar-room brawl, an Indian massacre or a beautifully sustained scene on a parade ground. Peckinpah was the original director but was replaced by Laven and by 1965 the Western was no longer as popular as it had been a decade or so earlier. This one is ripe for rediscovery.