The Return of a Man Called Horse is a 1976 American western film directed by Irvin Kershner involving a conflict over territory between Sioux Indians and white men. It is the sequel to A Man Called Horse.
Richard Harris reprises his role as Horse, a British aristocrat who has become a member of a tribe of Lakota Sioux. It was followed by The Triumphs of a Man Called Horse in 1982.
Plot
Set in the 1840s, trappers with government support force the Yellow Hands Sioux off their sacred land. The Indians retreat, but await supernatural punishment to descend on their usurpers. An English aristocrat Lord John Morgan known as Horse (Harris) returns to America to live with the tribe and discovers that the Yellow Hand people have been largely massacred or put into slavery by the unscrupulous white traders and their Indian cohorts. The few survivors, including wise old Running Bull and stubborn old Elk Woman have gone into the badlands and been forced to eat their dogs. "Why did you return?" asks Elk Woman. "I had to come back," says Morgan. "I had to prove something to myself... there was an empty place in my soul. I could not forget." He finds the tribe dispirited, because of the actions of the trappers, and he begins to devise a strategy to overpower the trappers stronghold, convincing the Indians to take direct action. Soon even the Indian women and boys are assigned tasks to aid the assault on regaining their ancestral land.
Cast
- Richard Harris - John Morgan
- Gale Sondergaard - Elk Woman
- Geoffrey Lewis - Zenas
- William Lucking - Tom Gryce
- Jorge Luke - Running Bull
- Jorge Russek - Blacksmith
- Claudio Brook - Chemin De Fer
- Enrique Lucero - Raven
- Regino Herrera - Lame Wolf
- Pedro Damián - Standing Bear
- Humberto López - Thin Dog
- Alberto Mariscal - Red Cloud
- Eugenia Dolores - Brown Dove
- Patricia Reyes Spíndola - Gray Thorn
- Ana De Sade - Moon Star
Filming
Much of the film was shot in South Dakota in the United States. Other scenes were filmed in the United Kingdom and Mexico.[1]
Reception
The film received mixed reviews on its release. Roger Ebert while not highly critical of the film noted that the film attempted to take itself too seriously and paid unnecessary attention to detail. According to Ebert "The film reveals its basic white-chauvinist bias, but it certainly seems to take itself seriously. It's of average length, but paced like an epic. There are four main movements in the plot: Return, Reconciliation, Revenge and Rebirth. If this seems a little thin for a two-hour movie, believe me, it is, even with all that portentous music trying to make it seem momentous.[2] Ebert also criticized the repetition in the film from the original A Man Called Horse. Ebert commented that "What gets me is that initiation rite, which is repeated in this film in such grim and bloody detail you'd think people didn't have enough of it the last time. First Morgan has his pectoral muscles pierced with knife blades Then eagle's talons are drawn through the wounds and tied to leather thongs. Then he hangs by the thongs until sufficiently purified. You'd think one ceremony like that would do the trick, without any booster shots"[2]
See also
References
External links
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