"Fort Apache" was the first film in John Ford's so-called "cavalry trilogy" and out of the two I watched (the other being "She Wore a Yellow Ribbon") this is probably the most entertaining, adventurous and dramatic of the two movies. the movie opens in a carriage where Army Lt. Col. Owen Thursday (Henry Fonda) and his daughter Philadelphia (Shirley Temple) are heading out west to take command of Fort Apache to and at the same time deal with the native Cochise tribe and train the new recruits for battle against them. After the Thursday's move into their living quarters we end up meeting Lt. col. Thursday's second in command Capt. Kirby York (John Wayne), and a love interest for Philadelphia Lt. Michael O'Rourke (John Agar) who also happens to have his father a Sergeant Major (Ward Bond) in the Army with him. It does take a little while for the action to come along in the movie because it focuses more on the training of new recruits and the romance between Philadelphia and Michael.After ther Army finds a reason to go after the Cochise Lt. Col. Thursday and Capt. York believe in different approaches to deal with the cochise tribe, which Thursday is just focused on the glory and the fighting due to his arrogance, while York has more common sense and wants to broker a peaceful solution with the natives. The battle sequences in this movie are nothing short of amazing, the performances especially by Wayne, Fonda, Temple, Bond, Agar, as well as Victor McLaglen are notable standouts as well as everyone else in the movie delivering very good work. This movie is one of the best westerns that John Wayne ever did throughout his prolific 50 year career along with "The Searchers" (1956), "Red River" (1948), "Rio Bravo" (1959), "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance" (1962),and "The Shootist" (1976) among others. Fonda delivers the strongest performance in the whole movie as a man who would to anything to win a battle and bask in the glory of it all no matter what it took, and Ford's direction is top notch as always without making one misstep during its 2 hour and 8 minute runtime. The movie is nothing short of a western masterwork and is one of 1948's finest films.
Review of Fort Apache
