Kritiken

It arguably features the most cantankerous hero of any Fuller feature, quite an accomplishment given the sheer orneriness of other protagonists in his work.

For every stroke of pulpy unreality, there are Fullerian set pieces you can't deny, including an alarming quicksand scene and possibly the most harrowing and bloodthirsty Indian siege ever seen in a studio film. (Famously, this was the first film to use bullet squibs.) Robustly contradictory in the classic Fuller mode, it's a must for completists.

Samuel Fuller could turn out a minor classic with one hand tied behind his back. For proof, see Run of the Arrow, a miscast, uneven Western so shrewdly and vigorously directed that it emerges as the film Dances with Wolves should have been.

Fuller bullishly foregrounds the insurmountable complexity of institutionalized racism, which is not solved on an individual basis but rather revealed in its most torturous, raging contradiction. Run of the Arrow is one of the director's finest films on that idea, using postbellum Confederate fury to craft a western that upends the hoary "going native" trope.

It depicts America as a land of perpetual warfare, one in which race and cultural hatreds are reconfigured to justify the current battle, whether without or within. It is a film of jagged rhythms, its chase scenes broken into extreme long shots and close-ups, which are then followed by minutes-long takes of two-shot conversations. At no point does one feel settled or comfortable regarding a character's motivations or their position in space, and that is how Fuller wanted it.