Having been accused of depleting the native American population and of rarely featuring an uncaricatured Jew or African-American in his films, director John Ford delivered this rather static courtroom drama about a black cavalry sergeant accused of rape and murder. Daring in its time, it's still powerful today. Woody Strode - the Ethiopian slave in Spartacus - gets the role of a lifetime as Rutledge, and the sequence where he sings Captain Buffalo (the film's original title) and crosses the River Pecos was one of the most significant in Hollywood's treatment of blacks in cinema to that date. Carleton Young is also impressive, but nominal stars Jeffrey Hunter - from Ford's The Searchers - and Constance Towers - Hannah in The Horse Soldiers - are inadequate.

Respected black cavalry Sergeant Brax Rutledge stands court-martial for raping and killing a white woman and murdering her father, his superior officer.