The Stalking Moon (1968)

This movie is the proof that the world is becoming a sick and dumb place

It's funny watching the elements come together in this complicated scam. On one hand, the set-up isn't quite as complex as it seems, but there's an easy sense of fun in every exchange.

Mostly, the movie is committed to the value of a good time.

Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

In earlier generations, little boys played Cowboys and Indians, so the western was an enormously popular film genre up through the 1970s. The old stereotype of "cowboy-good, Indian-bad" has thankfully died out, and those types of movies aren't really made anymore. If you want a lesson in racist Americana, feel free to watch The Stalking Moon or any other "typical" western. If you're actually looking for a good movie, look elsewhere.Gregory Peck is about to retire from his job as a good cowboy who fights Indians for the army. His impending retirement is drummed into our heads quite often in the first ten minutes of the movie. During his last assignment, he and his side-kick, "The Breed", Robert Forester, rescue Eva Marie Saint from her terrible capture. Her young son, another "half-breed" is rescued as well, even though he clearly doesn't want to leave his people and the only world he's ever known. Nevertheless, despite his repeated escape attempts to go back home, Eva and Greg keep him close by. Eva, in a practically wordless performance, doesn't tell her rescuer that her son's father is a ruthless, evil murderer who will stop at nothing to get his son back. Then give him his son! The entire movie, I was shouting at the television, trying to convince Eva to return her son and save dozens of innocent lives.There's absolutely no reason why Greg continually puts himself in danger for this stranger and her son; he nor any other character in the film is given any character development to explain their actions. Greg is just "the good guy" and the vicious Indian is just "the bad guy". None of the Indians are given any spoken lines, but that's not very surprising in a film that actively perpetuates a bad relationship between the races. If that's not enough racism for you, here's one more tidbit: when Eva starts getting domesticated by Greg, her years-long tan starts to fade and her dusty blonde hair magically lightens. In other words, when she starts getting close with a white man, she starts looking "whiter" so the audience will be more likely to accept her.

I thought that the song goes it's only a paper moon. Just kidding, but this disappointing film may have very well needed paper added to it.The dialogue is limited. I can understand that because the Eva Marie Saint part calls for a woman who had been kidnapped by the Indians years before and had a child with the chief.Found by the army and it's scout, Gregory Peck, the wife knows that her husband shall be on her tail and immediately flees with Peck. They are pursued all over and the bodies begin piling up wherever the Indian goes in his pursuit of the Saint character.The picture eventually comes as a cat and mouse venture between the Indian and Peck. With all that shooting occurring between them in the forest, I thought I was back in "Duel in the Sun."

A tense, fairly realistic, and mature western from 1968, when the genre was on the way to near oblivion, only to be saved now and then by the likes of Peckinpah and Eastwood. Unfortunately, this film is not so well known and has been unfairly characterized as plodding and slow. It definitely has a degree of introspectiveness to it, but their is a gem of a pursuit story. The film does its best not to sugarcoat the west. The locales and people are pretty impressive for their gritty primitiveness and overall authenticity. The central story about a fierce Apache warrior who's waging his own brutal campaign to kill as many whites as he can, chasing the white woman who was his wife and the mother of his son, while an ageing army scout does his best to protect them is framed by some pretty awesome photography of blinding sandstorms, thick vegetation, and lots of rocky cliffs and a fine score.

Gregory Peck is an army scout trying to take back with her people a white woman (Eva Marie Saint) that has been rescued from the Apaches that kidnapped her some years before. The point is that she has become a mother while in captivity and the fierce Indian father of the kid (appropiately called Salvaje) goes after them to recover his son no matter what.The plot is quite simple and yet this is not an ordinary western. It is full of suspense and menace, both very well handled by director Robert Mulligan. Salvaje is never at sight but he is always there as a real and deadly menace. The atmosphere is perfectly achieved and the picture is a thrilling experience all along in spite of a bit of excess in its duration; perhaps a 10 minutes cut might have been better.Mulligan was a skillful director, not very prolific, but with other fine films in his account such as the excellent "To Kill a Mockingbird" (also with Peck), the enjoyable "Summer of '42" and the fine thriller "The Other" unfairly underrated no doubt.With "The Stalking Moon" Mulligan tries his hand at westerns and he gets an interesting one that suits the genre's fans and surely thriller's fans too.