I haven't seen many of John Wayne's movies, but I would imagine that most of his are like this. John is the good guy, but the movie can't decide if the natives are the bad guys or the soldiers are. What is different about this movie to many other westerns is that a lot of emphasis is on how significant a father's influence is in raising a son. If you like Westerns, or you like John Wayne, watch this movie.

On a remote ranch in the heart of Apache territory, a U.S. cavalry dispatch rider (John Wayne) befriends a mother (Geraldine Page) and her young son, falling in love with the former and becoming idolised by the latter. However, he harbours a guilty secret, having killed the pair's absent, good-for-nothing paterfamilias in an act of self-defence. Meanwhile, treacherous palefaces have rescinded a treaty with the Apaches, setting them on the warpath. In certain respects, "Hondo" feels like Wayne's answer to "Shane", though it's sufficiently different and well enough crafted to be enjoyed as a lovely little western, in its own right. The sight of John Wayne sharing substitute parenting duties with an Apache chief was novel enough to make me overlook any 'join-the-dots' plotting. Originally shot in 3-D, the film contains a few awkward relics of that process, most noticeably the blocky opening titles, an unintentionally funny knife-fight and the occasional arrow or spear aimed squarely between the viewer's eyes. Page and Wayne give excellent performances, and director John Farrow handles the romantic aspect of the plot with aplomb, but the Apache uprising and most of the action scenes are very flat and pedestrian. The main problem I had with "Hondo", however, was that it wanted to have its cake and eat it, too. For most of its running time the film is surprisingly generous toward the Apaches, but the greedily inserted wagon train attack - which conveniently turns the young lad off being an honorary Apache, reasserting Wayne as his male role model - undoes much of the good that has gone before.