Excellent characters with emotional depth. My wife, daughter and granddaughter all enjoyed it...and me, too! Very good movie! You won't be disappointed.

The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

"Drum Beat" is notable on two counts. First it was Warner Bros. first wide screen CinemaScope picture and second it marked the first film in which Charles Buchinsky became Charles Bronson.Indian Fighter Johnny MacKay (Alan Ladd) is summoned to Washington by President U.S. Grant (Hayden Rourke) where he is appointed Peace Commissioner with a mission to make peace with renegade Modoc Captain Jack (Bronson). Accompanying him back to California is Nancy Meek (Audrey Dalton). The intended of stagecoach driver Bill Salterwhite is murdered by Modoc Jim (Frank DeKova) and Bill vows revenge.Later, during a meeting between MacKay and Captain Jack, Bill kills Modoc Jim thus starting an Indian war with the soldiers headed by General Canby (Warner Anderson). Peaceful Modocs Toby (Marisa Pavan) and Monok (Anthony Carouso) try to help MacKay in his quest for peace. A meeting is set up between Gen. Canby and Captain Jack but then.......................................................Alan Ladd made some pretty good westerns over the years but is woefully miscast in this one. It is hard to imagine the clean cut Johnny MacKay as a one time fierce Indian fighter. His buckskin jacket seems tailor made and he shows nary a whisker. Most Hollywood Indian fighters were grizzled unkempt mountain men. Not so here.Delmer Daves makes good use of the wide screen. He gives us beautiful panoramic shots of the mountainous regions together with those of the vast countryside. Victor Young as always, provides an excellent musical score. A lot of action and well staged battle scenes abound. The less said about the love triangle between Ladd, Dalton and Pavan the better.Other recognizable faces include Elisha Cook as a gun running Indian Agent, Rodolpho Acosta as Scarface Charlie, George J. Lewis as Captain Clark, Perry Lopez as Bogus Charlie and Denver Pyle, Richard Hale, Stother Martin and Peter Hansen in smaller roles.There is also an amusing little scene at the beginning with James Griffith as a White House sentry who advises MacKay how to get in to see the President.

A fairly scenic Western which boasts that it is based on true events, and announces in the beginning that it does take literary license to make it more entertaining, so there's no beef about that.Ladd plays Indian fighter Johnny, who has a hate-like-hate relationship with Captain Jack, played by Charles Bronson, and is on a first name basis with the leading thugs that accompany Captain Jack.Captain Jack is a Modoc Native American, but he is not a real captain. He steals medals from officers he kills. The real leaders of the Modoc don't trust him, and think little of him. Same for his main cohorts.He makes a name for himself in villainy, and President Grant tries to quell his killing peacefully. He sees the importance of keeping peace with the good Modoc people who would make good neighbors.As with any Delmer Daves directed movie, we know his high handed American Nazi ideology will prevail, and he will force the issue to kill at least one beautiful brunette woman. One must wonder if Daves was once jilted and humiliated by a brown eyed brunette, in order to make him continually do this.It is just one of the "forced" looking events that take place in this movie. More "forced" is the direction, in which Daves seems to want to display certain lines and characteristics in very unnatural looking sequences of events. It looks like Daves had in mind to make sure certain lines were spoken, and certain images taken. It almost looks like a movie made by a story book artist.Daves is a bit more subdued in this movie than in most movies, however, and it probably is the best of his works, which isn't saying much.

While the plot of DRUM BEAT is based on a true incident during frontier days on the plains, nothing about the film suggests that it's any more than a standard Cavalry vs. Indians western seen hundreds of times since the movies were born.However, credit director Delmer Daves for finding some gorgeous locations for his story and casting Charles Bronson and Anthony Caruso as Indians who look marvelously authentic in their make-up. Not so fortunate are Marisa Pavan and Audrey Dalton in the weak female roles that could have been played by any young ingénue on the Warner lot.Alan Ladd is the Indian expert hired by President Grant to make peaceful overtures to the Modocs, headed by Bronson. Elisha Cook, Jr. is interesting as a corrupt Indian trader and most of the supporting roles get good results, especially in the action scenes, all of which are well-staged by director Daves. Especially good is a climactic fight between Ladd and Bronson as they tumble down a rushing stream and fall over the rocky terrain. Ladd seems to be doing most of his stunts in this action-packed scene.But otherwise, he delivers a rather stoic performance, showing barely any expression even in his brief love scenes with Audrey Dalton. Hard to tell if he was bored or just impatient with the routine script.All in all, worth watching for the action scenes and the handsome landscapes filmed in beautiful WideScreen Technicolor.

One of Alan Ladd's better post Paramount films was Drum Beat, based on a little known incident from the Indian wars.For the first time an American general was killed during the wars against the Indian tribes. The little known Modoc war was another of those lesser known conflicts as action against the Sioux on the Great Plains and the Apache in the Arizona desert got far more attention. The Modocs were moved from a reservation in northern California to one in Oregon to share with the Klamath, a tribe that had a long feuding history with the Modoc. That was the immediate cause of the war. It was kept going by one of the Modoc's more charismatic leaders, a chief named Captain Jack.On April 11, 1873, General E.R.S. Canby among other peace commissioners who were sitting in council with Captain Jack and the other chiefs were suddenly shot and killed, in fact Captain Jack personally did shoot General Canby. Charles Bronson in his very first film with that name having dropped his real birth last name of Buckinsky plays Captain Jack. Warner Anderson plays the feckless and luckless Canby. The horror of that incident aroused some bad public opinion against the Modocs, not to dissimilar against to what was aroused against the Japanese after Pearl Harbor and Islamist extremists after the World Trade Center attack albeit on a much smaller scale. It certainly shifted priorities for a while in the War Department from the Sioux and the Apache.Alan Ladd plays a real frontier figure named Johnny MacKay who as the film has him was a civilian scout employed by the army to find Captain Jack. His role in real life was not at the center stage of the film, but he did play a part in the Modoc Wars. And he was not among the surviving peace commissioners he wasn't at the meeting when the assassinations happened.For all its inaccuracies Drum Beat is the only film I know to deal with this incident that shocked a nation during The Gilded Age.