GurlyIamBeach Instant Favorite.

Casey Duggan It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny

Jonah Abbott There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

Erica Derrick By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

DKosty123 There are two ways too look at this film. The first way too look at it is as a painting done by an artist of the Western Genre. In this sense, John Ford's film is just as good here as any film he did. The Monument Valley in Utah is used much the same here as it is in every film Ford featured it in.Fords work with this cast is a form of the artist too. Every person in this cast shines from Jeffrey Hunter's lead role throughout. Ford proves here he doesn't need John Wayne, James Stewart, or any of the biggest A List stars of 1960 to make a terrific film. This film is done with his style & flair. It has possibly the best performances on film of the entire cast. The classic courtroom & flash back sequences work as well as ever too.The second way to look at this is for political messages. I think it is a mistake too look at this film for that. Granted this is the largest black cast ever assembled for a Ford film, but that does not really mean he was trying to make a civil rights message here. In fact from what I see, the history here is fatally flawed as the period after the Civil War this is set in would not contain these people.Racism was not addressed immediately after the Civil War period. We wish (& maybe Ford did too) now that issue had been (Monday Morning Quarterbacks in 1960). True History indicates otherwise. What this script does is take some 1960 people who were coming around to the idea that racism is wrong, & places them after the Civil War. The result in this film is mixed on how effective that really is.Entertainment is something this film does provide well. Ford the artist does shine through here which makes this a much better than average film in it's era. I did read a review on here that takes offense too the women being sent out of the courtroom during certain testimony in the trial. The truth in that era is that could have happened. You have to remember that women did not get the right to vote until years after the time this movie is set in.Don't look at this movie as true history though. It is revisionist history. What I enjoy with this film is artistry of a great director taking an excellent cast & painting a great picture on a film canvas. This film does that very well.

SixtusXLIV Up to now I have considered "The Searchers" the Best of Ford Westerns. It has better picture (VistaVision), and the legend of John Wayne to back it. Some of the secondary roles are better portrayed by more expert actors such as Ward Bond, just to mention one. Production is more lavish..But the plot in "The Searchers" is unidirectional. It's just a story of white settlers against Indians. Sergeant Rutledge goes much deeper, into the social "fabric" of America,To avoid fastidious repetition, let me just point that the story goes into "American Problems" that endure 100 years after. Racism, young female behavior, that affects men of power, and old rich females who own perhaps more than 50% of the total assets (the wealth of the Nation) of the USA, and last but not least, the excessive power and "tricks" of legal professionals that always leads to corruption.It is all there. If the actors were a bit upper-crust it would be the best, but Jack Warner did no provide the cash. A must see...

bkoganbing John Ford who was among many who perpetuated black racial stereotypes, notably in Judge Priest and The Sun Shines Bright, got a chance to redeem himself with the making of Sergeant Rutledge. A year before in the Robert Mitchum film, The Wonderful Country, Negro League baseball legend Satchel Paige played a black cavalry sergeant in a supporting role. But in Sergeant Rutledge the story centers around such a character and the ordeal he goes through when accused of rape and murder. The victims are his commanding officer and his daughter.The leads are Woody Strode as the accused Sergeant Braxton Rutledge and Jeffrey Hunter as the lieutenant who defends him in a court martial. The story is told in flashback through the accounts of the many witnesses at the court martial and in some of those scenes, John Ford got to revisit his beloved Monument Valley for some good old Indian fights.The murders at the fort take place simultaneously with an outbreak from the Apache reservation. Constance Towers who discovers both the results of an Indian attack and the fleeing sergeant at the railroad station, becomes both Rutledge's biggest champion and the object of Jeffrey Hunter's romantic intentions.The dilemma that Strode faced was that by so many black people, especially in the south. He comes upon the dead girl who he knows from the fort and the fact she's been sexually violated. Her father sees him together with his dead daughter and assumes the worst about him and shoots him. Strode is forced to kill him in self defense and then has to run. A white man might have stayed and explained. The father might not have fired on a white man either.Woody Strode had he come along ten to fifteen years later might well have become an action hero star like Wesley Snipes for instance. As it was here and in his small role in Spartacus as Kirk Douglas's opponent in the gladiator school he plays both with impassive dignity and strength. These became his career roles, too bad he didn't build on Sergeant Rutledge to get better parts like black actors did in the next generation.Two of John Ford's stock company regulars shine in Sergeant Rutledge, Carleton Young and Willis Bouchey. Carleton Young is Captain Shattuck, the prosecutor at the Rutledge court martial and he's not above playing the race card to win his case. Very similar in fact to William Windom's prosecutor in To Kill a Mockingbird. Unfortunately for Young, he's not dealing with a jury of uneducated sharecroppers.Willis Bouchey is the presiding judge at the court martial and besides the court martial he has to deal with Billie Burke, his flibbertigibbet of a wife. He's got a lot grief to deal with, made double by the fact that Burke is called by Young as a witness. A lot of the comic relief in Sergeant Rutledge centers around Burke. This was her farewell screen role and she went out in scatterbrained style.Jeffrey Hunter turns out to be a pretty good lawyer himself and he brings the trial to a sudden end with a bit of fast thinking on his feet worthy of Perry Mason.This very first film dealing with the black buffalo soldiers of the U.S. Cavalry is great viewing for those who like both courtroom drama and westerns. If you like both, this is your film.

MartinHafer This is a marvelous Western starring Jeffery Hunter and Woodie Strode--thanks in large part to the always wonderful direction of John Ford and the fact that this film dared to take a big risk. In the 1950s and 60s, American was still struggling desperately with racism and it was still widely acceptable to demean or mistreat Black people. However, this film deliberately tries to debunk this myth that Black people are in some way inferior. The film attacks racism without being preachy or ridiculous (something that makes me hate GENTLEMEN'S AGREEMENT due to its very heavy-handed way of dealing with antisemitism).Woody Strode, as usual, plays a very dignified and wonderful role as a soldier on trial for rape and murder. He was a very fine actor and you wonder how much further he could have gone in life had he been White. Hunter plays the man defending him and shows more than he could in most of his other pretty forgettable films. The actual story of what occurred unfolds in flashbacks told during the course of the trial and the style is very reminiscent of Akira Kurosawa's film Rashômon. This is VERY ironic, as for years, Kurosawa had been a huge fan of Ford and tried to emulate the master director! In this case, it is the other way around! The film is near-perfect in the acting, story and execution. Watch this film and see that Westerns CAN be more than just the typical horse and Indian flick.