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Diving into this ironically goofy recounting of the Geronimo saga without being an aficionado of Westerns, I started from ground zero. I hardly knew anything about Geronimo at all. Which, when you think about it, isn’t a bad thing since this delightful adventure sprouted unfolds in a manner most improbable. But still, who gives a damn? If, as in my case Geronimo is little more than a war cry whenever you dive off anything, feel free to sit back, switch off your mind, and watch this for what it is: pure escapist fodder.
This film was made in 1962 and was directed by Arnold Laven a veteran of the profession who worked on The Rifleman and Hill Street Blues and The A-Team. This is a Western that wears its formulaic Pony Express and bounty hunters on its sleeves. What stands out is the fact that this is a Western that strives to be a Western and nothing but, and they’re proud of it. So yes, this was made long before the US grew a monstrous conscience along with a thorny guilt complex regarding its not so stellar history, and every single Western turned into a philosophical journey so mundane that it sucked life out of the genre.
One feature that stands out about this movie is how it has issues with contradictions. Some people argue that it is riddled with cliches, while others believe that it does a good job bringing the Western genre away from Randolph Scott and John Wayne’s basic formulation towards one with some semblance of social mindfulness. The argument is that this movie has probably one of the first social perspectives on it and to some extent, the movie does consider that point. But it doesn’t go particularly far in this regard. Sure, it shows some insignificant social exploitation and a couple of bad apples giving the Apaches a hard time. However, the movie is resolved in the most half-assed manner imaginable, with Geronimo agreeing to live under US law provided that he is treated with respect, and given some land to call his own. Not an impressive offer by today’s standards to say the least.
Connors are not the most popular choice for America’s representation of a native Indian. However, his smoldering good looks, together with his piercing blue eyes give him a charisma that makes him feel like the perfect choice. Not only is there a peculiar view on American Indians, but also the matter of casting. It is striking that there isn’t a single Native American actor among his peers, some of whom look more like overweight traffic cops.
We can at least understand that the Apaches are perceived here as a loving, albeit rough around the edges, group of people that take pride in their identity and expect to be honored. The truth however is that Geronimo was the last Apache to fight against his self-imposed placed captivity within a reservation. In the movie, this is taken a step further when the land that the Apaches are expected to live on and the farm is taken away, forcing them into even smaller more barren land. This alone is enough to trigger the uprising that has Geronimo along with some 50 men, women, and children, escaping from the reservation to hide in the mountains of Mexico. Over 5000 troops are sent to recapture or kill him but are still unable to accomplish this.
In the mid of the battle is nestled romance in the form of Geronimo’s fierce wife, Kamala Devi who also shares Druids can only not. (For those who are fans of trivia, she was supposed to get married to the infamous Chuch Connors after completing the movie together.) During the Authoritative dominance, while the cannonballs perpetually explode around her, she gives birth to his child. All of this leads to the climax of the fever pitch drama in this film. The struggles between her conviction that there is a more reasonable way forward than violence, and his aggressive belief that boys need to be warriors and not children, is a delightful undertone to the plot and functions as a seeming and unavoidable shift out of what can only be termed as primitive apache culture into the more civilized and better new west. Not only this, but Geronimo even quite unknowingly gets Kamala a book on one of his missions, and although it is baldy a Cavalyman’s handbook she is absorbed with the gift.
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