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16 out of 18 people found the following comment useful :-
A wonderful piece of social history, 26 July 2004
Author: Essex_Rider from England

This movie was a wonderful piece of social history. It was filmed during a turbulent time in the United States when Civil Rights marches were really making headlines. It was a well crafted and movingly brave attempt to address in celluloid what the Civil Rights movement was addressing on placards.

Throughout the trial, colour isn't mentioned at all until near the end, but the underlying issue is one of race and how easy it would have been to jump to the wrong conclusion and ‘Hang ourselves a nigger'. It was also incredibly brave to show how the protagonist, Sergeant Rutledge, (beautifully played by Woody Strode) was helped by a white woman; again very rare at that time.

This is a hidden gem of a movie, and although the dialogue gets a little stilted at times, it doesn't detract from the central issue. Judging by his performance when under oath, Woody Strode is up there with the best of the marvellous Black actors that have changed the face of social America.

I rate this 10 out of ten.

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13 out of 14 people found the following comment useful :-
"I'm a man.", 6 October 1999

Author: Ronald J. Foreman from Tucson, Arizona

I first caught the tail end of this John Ford masterpiece on AMC during Black History month, and couldn't wait for it to pop up on the schedule again so I could see the whole thing. I couldn't believe I had never heard of this film before, and after I did some research and discovered how reviewers in 1960 had dismissed it, I understood why. They went expecting To Kill A Mockingbird and got Breaker Morant instead. Ford was WAY ahead of his time with this one. Woody Strode, who plays the title character, helped break the color barrier in professional football years before Jackie Robinson did so in baseball. And he broke some huge barriers in this film, too. Every young black man -- heck, every young American male today -- should be required to watch this film. As Strode later said, Ford and script writers "put classic words in my mouth." Words that would be echoed three years later by Dr. Martin Luther King in his immortal "I Have A Dream" speech at the Lincoln memorial.

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10 out of 11 people found the following comment useful :-
Don't even think about it!, 29 May 2003

Author: laholly from United States

When I was scannning the reviews of this excellent movie, I found one comment that really flipped me out... REMAKE A JOHN FORD CLASSIC like Sergeant Rutledge????? Good Lord, what are you thinking. I am basically opposed to most remakes anyway,but this film in particular has stood the test of time just fine.... As another reviewer said,it is NOT a typical John Ford film,but it has to be one of his best. Woody Strode,one of the most under rated black actors of his generation is superb as in the title role. I would have to do some research to see how many films he did for Ford..in this film he is amazing. Jeffrey Hunter as defense attorney Tom Cantrell also turns in an excellent performance,caught between the proverbial rock and hard place when he is 'forced' to defend Rutledge. Constance Towers as Hunter's conscience, the school teacher, Mary is also quite good. Comic relief is provided by Billie Burke(Glinda the good) as the commanding general's wife,who cannot understand why she cant sit in the front row.

I have drawn a complete blank as to the actor who plays the prosecutor at Rutledge's courtmartial, but he is also very good... shades of Hamilton Burger. As much as I respect Denzel Washington as an actor ,I can't imagine him agreeing to remake this excellent film.... as for Ben Affleck as Cantrell, NEVER IN A MILLION YEARS. As I said in a previous review, if it ain't broke,don't fix it.....Bearing in mind that Ford, Hunter and Strode are all gone, it just wouldnt be right.

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14 out of 19 people found the following comment useful :-
Ford openly displays his art and poetry, 26 November 2004

Author: pzanardo (pzanardo@math.unipd.it) from Padova, Italy

John Ford openly displays his poetry in this magnificent film "Sergeant Rutledge". Maybe the great director and artist was annoyed that many did not get the anti-racist messages that permeate all his works (starting with "The Searchers": ever noted it?) and decided to make a definite, open statement.

To be as clear as possible, Ford willingly shows his art, poetry and trade-mark techniques in the most evident way. He masterly uses images and camera-work to convey emotion. We see Woody Strode (Sergeant Rutledge) constrained in a small chair, his never-ending shoulders covering half of the screen. And we feel uneasy. We feel that something evil is going on, that it's deeply wrong to keep such a man in chains, let alone to hang him. And then we see Woody Strode standing out, the Monument Valley on the background, like John Wayne in many other Ford's movies. I'm sure that such parallel Wayne-Strode was Ford's deliberate choice.

Ford uses his skills of epic poet to describe characters. Rutledge is arrested and searched. They find no money or other goods, just his emancipation papers. So, here we have a Man with all his richness: his honor, his courage, his strength and an emancipation paper. Great stuff! And then Rutledge says to a wounded mate "We don't fight the whites' war. We fight for our honor". Only Ford always manages to turn military rhetoric into poetry, mainly thanks to the visual beauty of the scene.

Woody Strode makes an outstanding, deeply touching job as the black cavalry sergeant. His acting is sober, poised but intense, with no melodramatic sides, and he physically dominates the screen (by the way: what an amazing athlete Strode was, at age forty-six!).

Rutledge is the Hero, the Legend of the movie. Yet Lt. Cantrell (Jeffrey Hunter) is as interesting a character as Rutledge is. Cantrell is a man of the 19th century. Unavoidably, he does have racial prejudices, but he nobly endeavors to overcome them, and certainly at the end of the story is a better person than at the beginning.

I guess that the two female characters represent Ford's dream. Indeed, they both do not even understand racism. The poor murdered girl loved his friend "uncle" Rutledge, and that's all. She doesn't even get the hints of the old ladies, who disapprove this friendship. And the same can be said of Cantrell's fiancée Mary Beecher, very well played by Constance Towers. She nurses the wounded black horse-soldiers with no attitude of doing something special. And some lines of Mary's show Ford's wonderful subtlety. She has been over-night with Rutledge in a deserted hut. Mary says to a concerned Cantrell "I wasn't alone. Sergeant Rutledge was with me and he protected me as well as any officer could do". That's a lesson for Cantrell: the fact that Mary pretends to think her boy-friend just concerned about military ranks, implies that she does not even notice the color of the skin and requires Cantrell to be the same way. Well, probably the two women are not fully realistic characters, especially for the 19th century. They are idealized by Ford, as a poet has the right to dream.

A small remark. Most Ford's films (not this one, actually) raise some controversy. Many heartily love them and many strongly dislike them. I think it rather expectable. Ford is a poet, and a poet cannot please everyone. Personally, I was indifferent if not displeased by the works of some much celebrated poets. Thanks God, poets follow their own way, not caring people's taste.

"Sergeant Rutledge" is not perfectly constructed and chiseled like other Ford's masterpieces. Small defects may be found in some court-room scenes and flash-backs. However, this splendid movie deserves top grades, due to the importance of its message and Ford's sincerity in displaying his art. "Sergeant Rutledge" is another top work by the Master.

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8 out of 8 people found the following comment useful :-
".....With a whoop and a holler and ring-tang-toe, Hup Two Three Four, Captain Buffalo, Captain Buffalo", 29 October 2006

Author: bkoganbing from Buffalo, New York

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

John Ford who was among many who perpetuated black racial stereotypes, notably in Judge Priest and The Sun Shines Bright, got a chance to redeem himself with the making of Sergeant Rutledge. A year before in the Robert Mitchum film, The Wonderful Country, Negro League baseball legend Satchel Paige played a black cavalry sergeant in a supporting role. But in Sergeant Rutledge the story centers around such a character and the ordeal he goes through when accused of rape and murder. The victims are his commanding officer and his daughter.

The leads are Woody Strode as the accused Sergeant Braxton Rutledge and Jeffrey Hunter as the lieutenant who defends him in a court martial. The story is told in flashback through the accounts of the many witnesses at the court martial and in some of those scenes, John Ford got to revisit his beloved Monument Valley for some good old Indian fights.

The murders at the fort take place simultaneously with an outbreak from the Apache reservation. Constance Towers who discovers both the results of an Indian attack and the fleeing sergeant at the railroad station, becomes both Rutledge's biggest champion and the object of Jeffrey Hunter's romantic intentions.

The dilemma that Strode faced was that by so many black people, especially in the south. He comes upon the dead girl who he knows from the fort and the fact she's been sexually violated. Her father sees him together with his dead daughter and assumes the worst about him and shoots him. Strode is forced to kill him in self defense and then has to run. A white man might have stayed and explained. The father might not have fired on a white man either.

Woody Strode had he come along ten to fifteen years later might well have become an action hero star like Wesley Snipes for instance. As it was here and in his small role in Spartacus as Kirk Douglas's opponent in the gladiator school he plays both with impassive dignity and strength. These became his career roles, too bad he didn't build on Sergeant Rutledge to get better parts like black actors did in the next generation.

Two of John Ford's stock company regulars shine in Sergeant Rutledge, Carleton Young and Willis Bouchey. Carleton Young is Captain Shattuck, the prosecutor at the Rutledge court martial and he's not above playing the race card to win his case. Very similar in fact to William Windom's prosecutor in To Kill a Mockingbird. Unfortunately for Young, he's not dealing with a jury of uneducated sharecroppers.

Willis Bouchey is the presiding judge at the court martial and besides the court martial he has to deal with Billie Burke, his flibbertigibbet of a wife. He's got a lot grief to deal with, made double by the fact that Burke is called by Young as a witness. A lot of the comic relief in Sergeant Rutledge centers around Burke. This was her farewell screen role and she went out in scatterbrained style.

Jeffrey Hunter turns out to be a pretty good lawyer himself and he brings the trial to a sudden end with a bit of fast thinking on his feet worthy of Perry Mason.

This very first film dealing with the black buffalo soldiers of the U.S. Cavalry is great viewing for those who like both courtroom drama and westerns. If you like both, this is your film.

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8 out of 8 people found the following comment useful :-
Magnificently acted courtroom Western, 24 May 2001

Author: sultana-1 from New York, NY

Western is not my favorite genre, but good character studies are, and Ford specialized in these in the 50's and 60's to a greater extent that most moviegoers realize. The boundaries of what Strode is willing to share with Hunter and what cannot be broached are fascinating enough, but Ford takes us deeper into all the characters and their motivations. I agree with an earlier observation comparing it with Breaker Morant and saying it was more than 20 years ahead of its time; I would say a mix between some of the most compelling aspects of Breaker Morant and A Soldier's Story. Watch this film.

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7 out of 8 people found the following comment useful :-
"I'm a man.", 6 October 1999

Author: Ronald J. Foreman from Tucson, Arizona

I first caught the tail end of this John Ford masterpiece on AMC during Black History month, and couldn't wait for it to pop up on the schedule again so I could see the whole thing. I couldn't believe I had never heard of this film before, and after I did some research and discovered how reviewers in 1960 had dismissed it, I understood why. They went expecting To Kill A Mockingbird and got Breaker Morant instead. Ford was WAY ahead of his time with this one. Woody Strode, who plays the title character, helped break the color barrier in professional football years before Jackie Robinson did so in baseball. And he broke some huge barriers in this film, too. Every young black man -- heck, every young American male today -- should be required to watch this film. As Strode later said, Ford and script writers "put classic words in my mouth." Words that would be echoed three years later by Dr. Martin Luther King in his immortal "I Have A Dream" speech at the Lincoln memorial.

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6 out of 7 people found the following comment useful :-
This film deserves to be more well-known and watched, 22 October 2006

Author: planktonrules from Bradenton, Florida

This is a marvelous Western starring Jeffery Hunter and Woodie Strode--thanks in large part to the always wonderful direction of John Ford and the fact that this film dared to take a big risk. In the 1950s and 60s, American was still struggling desperately with racism and it was still widely acceptable to demean or mistreat Black people. However, this film deliberately tries to debunk this myth that Black people are in some way inferior. The film attacks racism without being preachy or ridiculous (something that makes me hate GENTLEMEN'S AGREEMENT due to its very heavy-handed way of dealing with antisemitism).

Woody Strode, as usual, plays a very dignified and wonderful role as a soldier on trial for rape and murder. He was a very fine actor and you wonder how much further he could have gone in life had he been White. Hunter plays the man defending him and shows more than he could in most of his other pretty forgettable films. The actual story of what occurred unfolds in flashbacks told during the course of the trial and the style is very reminiscent of Akira Kurosawa's film Rashômon. This is VERY ironic, as for years, Kurosawa had been a huge fan of Ford and tried to emulate the master director! In this case, it is the other way around! The film is near-perfect in the acting, story and execution. Watch this film and see that Westerns CAN be more than just the typical horse and Indian flick.

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7 out of 9 people found the following comment useful :-
A great underrated film, 23 September 1999
Author: frankie-47 from Paddington, Brisbane, Australia

John Ford, ever the director of the under dog creates another masterpiece of forgotten American history.

Ford, who called himself a social democrat creates another film of nobility and personal convictions, both his and his characters. It is Fords great humanity and sense of justice which makes this film so appealing.

Some of the narrative is forced and the resolution is pat. What we do have is Fords beautiful colour camera in Monument Valley, ala "The Searchers ( 1956 )", broad humour, defined characterizations and attention to detail both individual and historical.

Jeffrey Hunter, always an underrated actor, is fine as the lead, but it is Woody Strode as the title character that is a stand out. His courtroom scene defending his beliefs and humanity is truly moving as is his scene as he rides back to save his troop. A " man mountain" he is ! Through his physical presence Ford coaxes out subtle nuances of character which give the role a ring of truth. Supporting him we have Fords usual wonderful stock players. Although not as poetic or thought out as some of Fords other films this is still miles ahead of other peoples efforts.

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8 out of 12 people found the following comment useful :-
Another superb Ford film, 13 October 2001

Author: palmer-4 from la

To say this is a great film may be an understatement. I can't believe this is not a more known movie, especially with Ford as the director. Jeffery Hunter plays a lawyer defending Woody Strode for murder in 1881, a very short time after Lincoln freed the slaves. It was a time of racism, but so was 1960, when this film was released.

This is a great character study, and a marvelous script. There's some humor and great performances. This should be considered a classic and I hope it really gets its due at some point. Could you see this remade? Maybe Denzel and Ben Affleck in the lead roles?

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