Buffalo Soldiers (DVD)
APPROX. 94 MINS. - PROD. YEAR: 1997 - MPA RATING: G
" ...says nothing that is particularly new about the history of race relations, but it presents its message in an elevating way. Meanwhile, there's the adventure to consider.
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This 1997 made-for-television release, "Buffalo Soldiers," recounts one of the real-life exploits of the African-American 10th U.S. Cavalry regiment, which helped patrol the Western frontier during the years following the Civil War. The men of this outfit, many of them former slaves, were dubbed "buffalo soldiers" by the Native Americans they were sent to police.
Like all "history," the facts depend upon who is telling them. The movie appropriately concentrates on the heroism and self-sacrifice of the soldiers; but the viewer should also note that some Native Americans have accused the buffalo soldiers of crimes against their people. Because of the concerns surrounding the authentic buffalo soldiers, the movie works best if seen as a straight action yarn, where it works pretty well, and not entirely as historical truth.
The Encyclopedia Britannica states that "an 1866 law authorized the U.S. Army to form cavalry and infantry regiments of black men; the resulting units were the 9th and 10th cavalries and the 38th through 41st infantries (these four were later reduced to the 24th and 25th infantries, which often fought alongside the cavalry regiments). The law required their officers to be white. The 10th Cavalry, originally headquartered at Fort Riley, Kansas, was commanded by Colonel Benjamin Grierson; his men were provided with aged horses, deteriorating equipment, and inadequate supplies of ammunition. Their duties included escorting stagecoaches, trains, and work parties and policing cattle rustlers and illegal traders who sold guns and liquor to the Indians, but their principal mission was to control the Indians of the Plains and Southwest."
The movie stars Danny Glover as First Sergeant Washington Wyatt, a soldier in the 10th Cavalry, H Troop, stationed at a woebegone little fort in the New Mexico Territory, 1880. The story is based on an actual circumstance in the history of the buffalo soldiers, a campaign against a group of renegade Apaches led by the warrior Victorio (Harrison Lowe), who was determined to drive white settlers out of the territory. Victorio and his followers were charged with murdering and mutilating settlers, and the U.S. Army was out to stop them.
The movie's opening scene establishes the integrity of the buffalo soldiers. Wyatt and a contingent of his men come upon a group of Texas Rangers who are hanging Apache children in an effort to extract information from them about the location of Victorio and his band. Wyatt orders the Rangers to stop hanging innocent people and arrests them for trespassing and murder.
Needless to say, when Wyatt returns his captive white prisoners to the fort, his new commanding officer, General Pike (Tom Bower), releases them. The movie is as much a political treatise on the conditions of the buffalo soldiers, the loyalty of the black men in its service, and their suffering at the hands of racist officers as it is an adventure story. The movie is politically correct to the letter and, in fact, rather overemphasizes its points. The General, for instance, is completely at odds with the notion of an all-black regiment. He thinks it's an ill-fated experiment and wants the blacks out of the army altogether, even though by the time the story opens, the buffalo soldiers had been serving the army honorably and successfully for well over a dozen years.
Col. Grierson (Bob Gunton) excepted, most of the white cavalry officers are every bit as much murderous villains in the picture as are the renegade Apaches. The Colonel, though, has been with the troop for years and would continue with them for a long time to come; he fully appreciates their work and devotion to duty. But the General and some of the lesser officers feel it is a comedown to command a troop of African Americans, a form of humiliation that will be detrimental to their careers. How badly were the black soldiers treated? In addition to their being given the grubbiest, dirtiest jobs on the frontier, the worst equipment, and the poorest accommodations, they were required to ride at least fifteen feet behind the white troopers and "to ride through a town without fanfare."
Most of the film is predictable and, as I say, follows a politically correct agenda. That doesn't make it any better or any worse than expected, but beyond observing its political statements about the treatment of African Americans and Native Americans at the hands of the white man, it's best to follow the story for its rousing conflicts, which begin about a third of the way in.
