Eagle's Wing (1979)

I like the storyline of this show,it attract me so much

That was an excellent one.

Fantastic!

Admirable film.

I saw this movie when I was about 18 years old, and I never forgot it. Now, almost 30 years later I have seen it again and I reassure my conviction: It is an excellent movie. It is not for everybody: If you are looking for western action, this is not going a good movie for you. If you are not open to weird movies, this is not for you either. But if you are open to new approaches, I am sure you will not be disappointed with it. It is exciting, unpredictable and has a very good photography. I liked also the acting of the main characters, and the twists of the story.From other point of view, it gives you a lot of material to think about the tragedies that occur because of the human ambitions, and the big Tragedy that occurred in that clash of civilizations that happened in the far west, the same kind of tragedy that is happening again in these days in several parts of our world.

"Eagle's Wing" baffles me. Visually, it is incredibly beautiful, though I do not understand the iconography and whatever symbolism plays within it. I cannot set it in a historical period though commentators have explained that aspect of the film. I am not certain who the characters are and sometimes I am not certain who the actors are.I do not see anything particularly innovative. Sometimes conventional elements, such as an intrusive musical sound track near the end of the movie, seem superfluous.I suppose the film is mythic but I am almost clueless about what that means here. There are scenes in which the trappings of wealth and power seem meaningless within the forbidding but lovely landscape."Eagle Wings" lacks the wryness of Samuel Becket, the clarity of the monoliths or the personality of HAL from Stanley Kubrick, or the grit of John Ford but the captured girl is pretty even if she is abandoned in the wilderness. For some reason, I like this movie. It is a nihilist masterpiece.

The picture narrates the odyssey of a cowboy (Martin Sheen) that one time murdered his partner , a white trapper ,(Harvey Keitel) by Indians , steals a horse (called Eagle wing) to Comanches . Having stolen a white mustang from a Kiowa Indian , he then pursues him to get his horse back . As he's pursued by an Indian (Sam Waterston) who retrieves it and vice versa , going on a relentless pursuit . Meanwhile , the Indians attack a stagecoach with passengers (Stephane Audran and John Castle as a priest whose role was offered to Trevor Howard) and abduct an attractive girl . A Mexican posse (Enrique Lucero , Claudio Brook ) set out to track down the savage raiders .Solid western with great loads of action and violence . From the initiation when horse robbing until the final , the fast-movement and action-packed western is continued . The pic is a crossover of various films , the white woman kidnapped by Indians just like ¨The searches¨ (by John Ford) , the battle against nature from ¨ Man in wilderness land ¨ (Richard C Sarafian) and ¨Jeremias Johnson¨ (Sidney Pollack) and obstinacy and stubbornness between two merciless enemies who fight with no rest such as ¨The duelists¨ (Ridley Scott) . The magnificent cast is formed by an excellent Martin Sheen (Apocalypse now) as tough and two-fisted rider obsessed to recover the slim and graceful horse . Sam Waterston (Killing Fields) in a rare role as Comanche is very fine . Supporting cast is featured by European actors, -this is a British production by Rank Organization- such as Stephane Audran (Claude Chabrol's muse) and John Castle (Lion in Winter) as the priest . Besides , Mexican actors (Jorge Luque , Claudio Brook, Enrique Lucero) because being set in Mexican frontier . Splendid cinematography by Billy Williams , it is wonderfully shown on spectacular landscapes . Lively and jolly musical score by by Mark Wilkinson . The motion picture was well directed by Anthony Harvey (Lion in Winter). However , the picture was a flop and barely obtained money and failed at box office .

This splicing of THE SEARCHERS is one of the weirdest films I've ever seen, filmed by a Briton in a strange, unfamiliar Mexico. It's often said that the best films about America are made by foreigners, who can approach the familiar with an outsider's eye. But this crackpot film is something else. Though set ostensibly in post-Civil War America, this isn't an America recognisable from myth, cinema, TV etc. The film has an air of timeless fable about it, while dealing specifically with Western mythology.Director Harvey uses the title horse as a focus for interconnecting stories, all dealing with the traditional Western clash of the primitive and civilisation. The former seems to have the upper hand. The vast scrub and desert of the film's landscape is unbroken, ripe for allegories of the mind. The only brief sites of civilisation are a stagecoach of missionaries and landowners, and their hacienda, from both of which derive behaviour that is anything but civilised.The basic story intercuts three stories. In one, an aimless deserter, Pike, having lost his trading partner, steals a miraculous horse, Eagle's Wing, so-called because of its grace and speed. In the second, an Indian, White Bull, owner of this horse, waylays a stagecoach, and kidnaps one of its female occupants. In the third, the Spanish men sent to find her ignore this quest in favour of a murderous, plundering spree.Although a revisionist Western, the treatment of the Indian is problematic. Unlike Pike, his character is never explained, forever inscrutable, denied a voice, except for an excruciating snatch of song. When he's not a strange Other, he's a symbol, whose role isn't entirely worked out - at one point a savage brute, at another he epitomises nature and freedom.But Pike notes at the beginning that the film will attend to the period of primitivism before civilisation. In many ways the film resembles 2001 - A SPACE ODYSSEY, especially its opening sequence. Part of the film's power lies in the connections made between the three disparate characters, forcing us to view the mythic struggles and quests in a different light. Indian culture and Catholicism is linked by superstition, ritual, greed and murder. Both Pike and White Bull are musical and alcoholic. White Bull is demonised by both Pike and the abductee as a 'bastard', unwittingly revealing the tactic of illegitimacy used by colonising whites who infantilised the natives, becoming themselves 'necessary' fathers.Unlike a traditional Western, concerned with making history, civilisation, and progress, this film is a double detective story, interrogating the past, tracks, remains.What gives this film its remarkable uniqueness, I think, is, despite Maltin's racism, its Britishness. The climactic stand-off is more like an Arthurian joust. The film itself bravely eschews dialogue for the most part, creating the kind of visual and aural tapestry Malick missed in THE THIN RED LINE, and something few Hollywood directors would have dared. The existential doubling and quest motifs are more European myth than American (resembling another British Harvey Keitel movie, THE DUELLISTS).Most astonishing is the use of nature. Most Westerns use landscape as an awe-inspiring backdrop: there is little sense of actually living in the West. In many ways, EAGLE'S WING is like a Powell and Pressberger film, with nature a powerful, pantheistic character in its own right - alive, dangerous, hostile, beautiful. There is a sublime scene reminiscent of A CANTERBURY TALE, when jewellery left as a trap by White Bull in the trees is suddenly blown in the wind: there is a haunting, tingling, magical, thrilling effect more reminiscent of the Arabian Nights than a horse opera. Heartstopping.