Soldier Blue is a 1970 Revisionist Western film directed by Ralph Nelson and starring Candice Bergen, Peter Strauss, and Donald Pleasence. Inspired by the events leading up to the Sand Creek massacre
of 1864, the film utilizes the narrative surrounding the massacre as an allegory for the contemporary Vietnam conflict.
This film provides examples of the following tropes:
- Armies Are Evil: The militia cavalry are shown to be Always Chaotic Evil brutes who show no hesitation in ransacking a peaceful Indian village.
- Atrocity Montage: The film gruesomely depicts the Sand Creek Massacre with frenzied U.S. Cavalrymen brutally murdering Cheyenne civilians through shooting, dismemberment and decapitation. These scenes are used to emphasize the themes of warfare and genocide. It's worth noting the scenes are evocative of the My Lai massacre, which was recent memory in the 1970s.
- Blood Knight: The cavalry soldiers appear to take great pleasure in their slaughter of the Cheyenne, laughing maniacally as they shoot children dead and mocking the villagers' dying cries.
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Broken Aesop:- As pointed out by Roger Ebert in his review, the audience is supposed to identify with the Native Americans' suffering, but this point is undermined by the fact that the natives in fact play very little role in the narrative, with the focus primarily being on the white protagonists.
- The film's intended depiction of rape as a horrific act of violence is similarly undermined by the fact that the Attempted Rape of Candice Bergen's character Cresta by a group of Kiowa warriors earlier in the film is presented as being comical.
- As pointed out by Roger Ebert in his review
- Death of a Child: The massacre scenes feature several young Native American children (along with everyone else in the village) brutally murdered by crazed U.S. Calvary soldiers. Children are graphically shot, stabbed and trampled by horses all while the soldiers cheer on their own actions.
- Does This Remind You of Anything?: The climactic scenes are intended to be evocative of the 1968 My Lai Massacre, with U.S. soldiers brutally butchering innocent civilians with reckless abandon.
- Downer Ending: After all the bloodshed, Honus is led away in shackles and Cresta departs with the remaining few survivors.
- Evil Colonialist: Colonel John Chivington, portrayed in this movie by John Anderson.
- Exploitation Film: Some reviewers have accused the film of being one, claiming that the filmmakers seemed more interested in graphic violence and shock value than the supposed themes of war and genocide. DVD Talk's review, for example, calls it "essentially nothing more than a snuff film with a conscience...and a particularly suspect conscience at that."
- Gorn: The massacre scenes are a veritable orgy of bloodletting, dismemberment, and decapitation.
- Noble Savage: The Cheyenne are portrayed as a peaceful tribe that helplessly plead for mercy when the cavalry attack their village, not even trying to fight back.
- Perspective Flip: It's the classic western plot of Cavalry vs. Indians, where the Cavalry are the evil savages massacring innocent civilians.
- Rape, Pillage, and Burn: During the massacre towards the end of the movie, the men of the cavalry viciously engage in this to an intensely graphic extent.
- Soundtrack Dissonance: Deliberately used during the ending. After the Army is done with destroying the village, they march out to the rendition of Battle Hymn of the Republic, which is almost comically cheerful.
- Title Theme Tune: "Soldier Blue", sung by Buffy Sainte-Marie.
- War Is Hell: As mentioned above, the battle scenes in this film are brutal.
