In 1983, the western movie series with Gojko Mitic by East German DEFA, which had begun 1966 with "Die Söhne der großen Bärin", came to an end with "Der Scout". Oftentimes with the last part of a long series, you have an uninspired copy, a kind of last breath, but that is not the case here! "Der Scout" presents fresh locations in Mongolia (!) that look as lonely as the west must have been once, and the strengths of this movie are a careful characterization and that it doesn't show unnecessary violence; it even is recommended for children from the age of 6 by the German censorship institution FSK. Which doesn't mean it's sweet and simple.
"Der Scout" tells the story of the Nez Perce Indians whose horses are taken away by the US army, hoping the Indians will stay in a reservation once they can't move around so much anymore. White Feather (Gojko Mitic) pretends he wants to serve the soldiers as a scout, but he intends to bring the horses back to his people. Everything gets more complicated when a different tribe of Indians attacks, White Feather has to take care of a wounded girl (Nazagdorshijn Bazezeg, I found different spellings for the name of the actress which is hardly surprising) and the commanding officers begin to hate each other under the growing pressure.
Each of the seven soldiers whom the scout is leading has a different personality; we really have a good screenplay and a careful director here. The Mongolian extras with their high cheekbones remind me more of Eskimoes than Indians, but I leave that to the anthropologists. Bring some kind of insecticide if you ever go to Mongolia, there are swarms of flies there - in some close-ups, I pitied the actors. The production must have a been a huge logistic challenge, anyway, because throughout the movie, hundreds of horses (900, claims one of the soldiers in a dialog - 1000, said the advertising campaign) are roaming around. It was worth the effort, an interesting western from the east.
