\”Certainly, I think, the best of the John Ford US cavalry trilogies this one. Henry Fonda is cracking as the honourable, but out of his depth, by-the-book colonel sent to run a ramshackle army post just as the Apache are on the rise again. He replaces the far more practically experienced John Wayne and soon it all gets a bit sticky. John Agar and Shirley Temple provide an amiable romantic sub-plot as the very green lieutenant son of the Sergeant Major (Ward Bond) and the daughter of the Colonel who fall in love - despite the disapproval of (for different reasons) both sets of parents. The photography is, as usual, quite stunning - George O'Brien; Pedro Armedáris, Dick Foran and the inimitable Victor McLaglen all contribute hugely (and frequently humorously) to a tight little, and occasionally quite thought-provoking, Frank Nugent screenplay and the Admiral maintains a decent degree of jeopardy - between the two, on-form, leads and between them and the Apache - until the very, gallant, end. It's held up remarkably well, nodding subtly - but distinctly - to the appalling way the native American tribes were treated during the pioneering, expansion of the United States.”

CinemaSerf