The book "Bugles in the Afternoon" is regarded as one of the better novels relating to Custer's Last Stand, and this film is a reasonable adaptation, not that it devotes much time to the battle itself. Rather it concentrates on a love triangle, with some good cavalry action with the Indians that is almost incidental to the Custer massacre.
I blinked a little at Kern Shafter's appearance on arriving to enlist at Fort Abraham Lincoln; he looked extremely smart, even for the gambler he had become. I assume his motivation in rejoining the colours was nostalgia for army life,though this wasn't completely evident.
The well-known participants in the battle - Custer, Reno, Benteen - don't get much screen time, and the General himself has only a few lines. At least he looks the part, with the short hair he favoured for a hot campaign rather than his trademark long locks. Purists may raise their eyebrows at the cavalry using repeating rifles, when in fact they carried single-shot carbines, and pack-animals rather than the wagons shown supplied the troops in the general battlefield area.
But all in all, it's a reasonable cavalry Western, but not in the same league as those of John Wayne and John Ford.
I blinked a little at Kern Shafter's appearance on arriving to enlist at Fort Abraham Lincoln; he looked extremely smart, even for the gambler he had become. I assume his motivation in rejoining the colours was nostalgia for army life,though this wasn't completely evident.
The well-known participants in the battle - Custer, Reno, Benteen - don't get much screen time, and the General himself has only a few lines. At least he looks the part, with the short hair he favoured for a hot campaign rather than his trademark long locks. Purists may raise their eyebrows at the cavalry using repeating rifles, when in fact they carried single-shot carbines, and pack-animals rather than the wagons shown supplied the troops in the general battlefield area.
But all in all, it's a reasonable cavalry Western, but not in the same league as those of John Wayne and John Ford.