I Meant What I Said

I told you I'd get some posts done, and unlike back at the end of July, I intend to carry that through.

So let's talk movies. We watched Duel at Diablo Thursday night. Sidney Poitier and James Garner. Garner works sometimes as a scout for the Army, Poitier is a former cavalry Sergeant who now rounds up wild horses, breaks them, and sells them to the cavalry. Garner works as a scout for the Cavalry sometimes, but had a Native American wife who was recently killed and scalped by somebody. So he's a little pissed about that. The two of them wind up accompanying a troop of green cavalry on a trip to another fort, through hostile territory. Garner's along because the troop is headed to the town where his wife's scalp was sold from, so he was headed there anyway. Poitier's going along because the Army stiffed him. They didn't give him the time they promised to break the horses, so they're only paying him for the ones he'd manage to break thus far. Any more he can break along the way, he'll be reimbursed for.

There's another plot with a woman who was abducted and married into an Apache tribe, then later rescued and married to a bigoted white guy, who she despised, and tried to escape, but kept being brought back by Garner. It's a little strange, because she seems to feel she'll receive greater acceptance with the Apache (and more importantly, so will her half-Apache son) than amongst the white folks. Certainly her husband can't seem to decide whether he loves her, or wants to control her, or hates her. Still, the brief glimpse we get of her life with the Apache suggests the women don't care for her (she walks by carrying a load of wood, and gets shoulder-bumped to the ground by another woman, who makes no attempt to help her pick up the wood). Maybe her husband's nicer though. It's a moot point by the end.

It wasn't a bad movie. I thought Poitier did a fine job in his role, Garner somewhat less so. It's hard for me to see him wild and vengeance-driven. It didn't hold my attention consistently, as Dad and I were discussing the accuracy of the cavalry firing while riding galloping horses, among other things. Neither one of us was sorry to see bigoted white husband (played by Dennis Weaver) get killed, but Dad wasn't happy they let the Apache leader see his grandson one last time before being taken away, because he felt the leader was a scumbag. I pointed out the guy was going to suffer horribly on a reservation or in a prison, and his spirit was probably broken. I was complimented on my ability to find the positives in a wider outlook. Um, thanks?

We tried watching one of those Jessie Stone movies, Sea Change this time. I spent the majority of it criticizing Stone for his drinking and general dickery to everyone around him. My dad's rebuttal to the latter was even though they meant well, all his friends are pushing Jessie, and he doesn't like that. That may be, but he's kind of a jerk to people whether they're push him or not. To his credit, Jesse does try to curb his drinking, or add compliments to it. First he listens to Brahms, at the suggestion of a nosy old biddy who walks up to his car window while he's at a stop sign (I wouldn't necessarily blame him for being a jerk to her). That doesn't curb the drinking, so he pulls out an unsolved murder case from 15 years ago to try and occupy his time. He solves the case, but still doesn't curb his drinking. So much for finding something important to him being the key.