Only the Valiant (1951)

I gave it a 7.5 out of 10

Excellent characters with emotional depth. My wife, daughter and granddaughter all enjoyed it...and me, too! Very good movie! You won't be disappointed.

One of those movie experiences that is so good it makes you realize you've been grading everything else on a curve.

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

Only the Valiant falls into the category of "typical western". I don't have anything against westerns, but the ones I like have more substance than just "Cowboys versus Indians". Unfortunately, even with an interesting premise, the movie doesn't really explore much more than the game played by millions of little boys.Gregory Peck is involved in a love triangle. He loves Barbara Peyton, but so does Gig Young, and while both men are in the army, Gig Young is much better liked by the other troops and officers. Greg is signed up for a dangerous assignment, but at the last minute, his superior officer orders him to tell Gig Young to take his place. Gig is killed, and everyone holds Greg responsible, thinking he made the switch on purpose. He's sent to another dangerous battle with Indians, a battle he has to win to prove himself to the town, and to Barbara Peyton.Sounds interesting, right? I thought so, but once Greg gets sent to battle, I got pretty bored pretty fast. If you find cowboys and Indians fights riveting, you might like the rest of the movie better than I did, but for a good Gregory Peck western, I'll watch The Big Country.

Peck's perfect as the stiff-backed Capt. Lance. The question is can he and his gaggle of unmilitary types hold the fort against warpath Apaches. It looks like touch and go. But Lance has got extra incentive. The colonel's shapely blonde daughter (Payton) is waiting for him back at headquarters, maybe, that is. Now if he can just get Arab, the sergeant, and the lieutenant to aim their guns at Apaches instead of at him, Lance's got a chance.The movie's a little overlong, probably to accommodate the many performers; plus the sets for the tunnel through the mountains are, well, movie sets. Too bad, since the exteriors are shot at scenic Gallup, New Mexico. And catch that showdown battle filmed around Gallup with hundreds of extras. It's an unexpected doozy. The movie's also a chance for Hollywood gossips like me to catch tinseltown's most notorious party girl, the unfortunate Barbara Payton in her last major role. She's certainly a good enough actress. Now, if she could have just stayed away from all the big-time temptations.All in all, it's a decent cavalry movie, not directed with the verve or dispatch that I would expect from old pro Gordon Douglas. (Perhaps, he was constrained by the somewhat crowded screenplay.) Nonetheless, the acting is good, along with a number of colorful characters, topped off with a crowning action scene that features a dollop of the unexpected.

When Captain Richard Lance arrives are Fort Invincible he discovers the site of a massacre; every man stationed there is dead. There are still some of the Apaches who attacked present ransacking the site; one of them is Chief Tucsos. He captures the chief but his man want him killed believing that if he is dead his men will move on but if he is alive they will do whatever they can to rescue him. Lance accepts that this might be so but his orders are clear; he won't kill a man once he has been taken prisoner. The return to their own fort and Lance is ordered to arrange for the prisoner to be sent to another fort further away; he takes the mission himself but is ordered to stand down as the colonel thinks he is needed there. The man sent instead is his friend and rival for the affections of a woman at the fort; it is assumed he organised the replacement himself to get rid of a rival and when the detail is ambushed everybody blames him for the death of his friend. Now Tucsos is free it is only a matter of days before he attacks; in order to protect the fort Lance volunteers to take a small group of men back to Invincible to keep the Apaches pinned down as they try to come through a narrow pass that is the only way through the mountains. The men he selects to go with him aren't the best in the fort; they are the worst; they weren't selected because he thought they had hidden courage but because they would be the least missed when the Apaches broke through and attacked the main fort!This western isn't a classic but it is entertaining. Rather than the wide open expanses of the open plains the action mostly takes place within the confines of the wrecked fort and in the narrow pass the men seek to block; this gives the film a rather claustrophobic feel. This is increased by the fact that the band of malcontents Lance selected are potentially as dangerous to him as the Apaches they are meant to be fighting. The group includes a drunken corporal, a bullying sergeant bitter that he never received a commission, a coward, a deserter and an Arab trooper who has already attacked Lance once before! I rather liked the fact that these men didn't all turn out to be heroes after all; some of them did but others remained true to their base character throughout. Gregory Peck puts in a solid performance as the by-the-book Captain Lance and the rest of the cast are entertaining; especially Ward Bond who played the drunken Cpl. Gilchrist. The only character I was unsure about was Trooper Kebussyan; this portrayal as a somewhat crazed Arab, always referred to as Ay-rab, would be considered racist in a more modern film. The conclusion features one of the oldest clichés in the genre but it can be forgiven as it was fairly exciting. Overall this was a decent western and while it is not a must see it is worth watching if you get the chance.

Gregory Peck and Gig Young are competing for the same girl and after Peck sends Young on a very dangerous mission, they blame him for his reasons. Feeling guilty, Peck goes on an almost impossible task of defending a fort, where they are outnumbered by the Indians. Peck chooses for this mission soldiers which he considers to be the scum of the earth and the actors that play these soldiers, Ward Bond, Lon Chaney Jr., Neville Brand among others, are excellent. The script is derived from a novel by Charles Marquis Warren who was a specialist in westerns, as a writer, director and producer. The idea of using this type of men as heroes inspired many films that came out later including "The Dirty Dozen" made in 1967.