‘Ulzana’s Raid’ or — A Landscape of Total Violence?

There’s a moment of unexpected bloodshed near the start of ‘Ulzana’s Raid’ (1972) that’s so shocking and brutal in its directness that it blasts you out of your seat leaving you completely disorientated. This sequence achieves several functions: we immediately realise Ulzana is a force to be truly terrified of; it destroys any and all complacency (if THIS can happen then what the hell’s next?!) and that this is a land, a place, where the notion of ‘safety’ doesn’t exist. It’s an astonishing way of keeping the audience on their toes and you’ll be on them, unable to rest, throughout every single minute.

The plot is simple — Ulzana and his group of Apache warriors have ventured off their reservation and are destroying the homesteads in their path (imagine ‘The Searchers’ x 11). A detachment of US Cavalry is sent out from Fort Lowell under the command of the young, idealistic lieutenant Garnett DeBuin (Bruce Davison) accompanied by an ageing army scout, McIntosh (Burt Lancaster), and an Apache guide (Jorge Luke) intimately familiar with Ulzana’s tactics. They must stop Ulzana.

As the search goes on and the atrocities they encounter increase so piety is gradually exposed as bigotry, charity as a form of dominance and what initially appeared as callousness ultimately seen as pragmatic survival. DeBuin, a devout Christian, keeps asking why these men would do such horrific things, failing to understand that it is he himself, and everything DeBuin represents, that is the reason and that American “civilisation” can’t be imposed where it doesn’t belong without a counter reaction.

The result is a staggering piece of work that’s a shocking critique not just about the violence of the American frontier but also the nation’s involvement in Vietnam and the self-created myth of benevolence we use to rationalise our actively destructive actions.

The landscape reflects this with the rocks, soil, grass all coloured only in the browns of dried blood or sunburned decay (if there was ever a glimpse of life-giving green in this film I failed to catch it). This is not an environment conducive for existence, only of its inevitable extinguishment and the film has one focus and direction and that’s towards death. And when death comes it is always a jolt and I’m not sure I’ve seen a movie where the disruptive and disturbing impact of the violence is so severe.

Yet this almost (please note I use the word “almost”) creates an inadvertent problem for the film because the device of presenting a moment, a line of dialogue, a situation or a scene of “civilised humanity” only to then immediately undercut it with an opposing image of nihilistic severity means ‘Ulzana’s Raid’ could be said to have the structure and form — set-up/payoff, set-up/payoff — of a comedy… just an incredibly black one.

For example — one moment we might be watching a beautifully composed panning shot of nature that’s as exquisite as anything you’d find in Terrence Malick only for the camera to come to rest on something as shockingly savage from ‘Cannibal Holocaust’ (1980). As we find ourselves attuning into this rhythm of extreme contrasts our expectations and suspicions build, which could account for why whenever there was a glimpse of hope or compassion I’d find myself thinking “Uh-oh. So what piece of unspeakable horribleness are we going to be cutting to now? Oh, there it is and yep, that’s nasty!” This could explain why I was laughing so much throughout this movie — because it was the only way I could let all the tension out.

Besides, a laugh is nothing more than a musical gasp and ‘Ulzana’s Raid’ is a film that will certainly leave you gasping like a floundering goldfish. It’s one of the most savage films about American hypocrisy ever made, a headlong dive into the slaughter the nation was built on in the name of God and democracy, a slaughter it continues to exert overseas to this day.

It’s an incredible piece of work and I’m flabbergasted ‘Ulzana’s Raid’ isn’t spoken of as frequently as Aldrich’s ‘The Dirty Dozen’ (1967) because, in my opinion, this might, just might, be the better movie.