The Siege at Red River
The Siege at Red River
NR | 01 May 1954 (USA)
The Siege at Red River Trailers

Cavalry Captain Farraday attempts to prevent the delivery of Gatling Guns into the hands of hostile Indians.

Reviews
AboveDeepBuggy Some things I liked some I did not.
ReaderKenka Let's be realistic.
Stevecorp Don't listen to the negative reviews
Nicole I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.
dfwesley I really hate to see Van Johnson's talents wasted in a film like this. I never thought westerns were his bag anyway. He was with the "Georgia Volunteers" a vague designation that wouldn't satisfy any Union officer. And where was his accent? Now Richard Boone has played this kind of evil role before and again, and does it very well. I had to laugh at the Indians firing the Gatling gun( could they ever? would they ever?) at the fort while droves of other indians are closely surrounding it. Nary a horse hit during any of the battles. Monumental cavalry and Indian charges appear with the usual results. One has to swallow a lot to enjoy this western.
morpen-palmer I was not really concentrating on this film (on Film4), as I was reading the Sunday newspaper. However, I found my attention being more and more drawn to a plot that seemed to get more believable as it progressed. Characters were developed to the point where strangeness of behaviour became them. The lack of outright violence was a huge plus in such a story, that might easily have descended into a straight-forward gunfight. Period settings overcame obvious rigours of budget to a degree of acceptability. Though all aspects - dialogue, scenery, plot etc. - all fell short at some point, the overall effect was of a well-constructed and written movie into which a great deal of thoughtful direction had been lavished.
Marlburian I had seen this film some years ago, and the only scenes that I remembered were those when Johnson and Stone sing "Tapioca" as a code song to identify themselves to Southern agents. But I still enjoyed it second time around, and perhaps I should have first read Alice Liddel's intellectual comments written here so that I would have appreciated it better.Boone, playing an out-and-out villain, steals his scenes.I wasn't too sure about the comic interlude halfway through with Dru accidentally getting drunk, though it did teasingly leave us with the question: did Johnson really change her into her night-dress and put her to bed? I incline to nitpicking, and I thought it ham-fisted the way the Union troops charged in to town to arrest the Southern-sympathising storekeeper, only to shoot him dead. It would have been more convincing, but less spectacular, to send three or four men in to the store posing as customers - he could still have been shot in a struggle.I wonder what Southern audiences would have made of Johnson's change of heart at the end (I'm British)? Both sides in the Civil War used Indians, and by its end the fact that women and children - families of Union soldiers - would be killed would be of minor concern to many Confederates.
bux Johnson as a cavalry captain trying to stop the delivery of Gatling Guns to hostile Indians. Boone, of course stands out as the heavy, in this otherwise below par oater.