Slow pace in the most part of the movie.

Pretty Good

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

Elvis portrays the son of an Indian and a White Settler that is torn when the townsfolk and the local Indian Tribe look to war with each other.Sad subject matter and lots of the characters die through the course of the film.Worth a view if you are an Elvis fan.

White settlers battling Indians is a standard Hollywood storyline. But what happens when one frontier household contains both Whites and Indians? Which side does the household identify with, and support? That's the question, provocative for its era, in this early 1960's Western from director Don Siegel.The story's characters are mostly stereotyped, especially the Indians who lack individuality. They are the story's antagonistic force, consistent with racial bias of previous decades. Further, that they speak English instead of their native language supports their status as two-dimensional cartoon figures, hardly more than movable set pieces.On the other hand, the film's dialogue at least provides the Indians with a motivational rationale for their hostility. At one point in the film, their chief, Buffalo Horn, tells Pacer, the half-breed: "Whose land is this? Who has lived here since the beginning of time? They (the Whites) come against us, forever cutting deeper and deeper into our land, forever pushing". That's a big improvement in dialogue from earlier Westerns.Filmed unfortunately in Cinema Scope, the visuals have an annoying letterbox projection. But the lonesome "Texas" landscape is beautiful and, when combined with the sound of a howling wind, creates an evocative, melancholy mood. The use of camera filters is obvious in this film. And I could sometimes not tell if a scene was supposed to be day or night.Casting and acting are acceptable. For a professional singer, Elvis gives a fine performance.The "flaming star" title refers to a personal vision at the onset of death, as described in the title song, which is quite beautiful and haunting. But the film's nondescript score is super annoying, especially toward the end, when it overwhelms the plot action.The film has a Hollywood look and feel that screams: studio production. Yet, the story of a family caught in the middle of racial conflict, with attendant thematic implications, and the script's intelligent dialogue deserve respect from viewers. Further, some of the visuals are captivating. And my overall assessment of this film is mildly positive.

FLAMING STAR is generally regarded as the film which provided Elvis Presley the best performance of his disappointing film career.It is totally out of kilter in what you would expect from a typical Elvis "romp".With a top director (Don Siegel),a literate script and story (by western veteran Clair Huffaker) and a solid supporting cast (John McIntire,Dolores Del Rio,Steve Forrest,Barbara Eden) behind him,there is indeed a very good case for this being the King's best dramatic performance,along with his other two oft-quoted top big screen vehicles (JAILHOUSE ROCK,KING CREOLE).Elvis himself only sings two songs,over the titles and in a fairly light-hearted opening scene during a birthday party for his half-brother (Forrest) involving family and friends at his parents' ranch.After these jollities,things quickly turn very grim;in a surprisingly graphic (for it's time) sequence,the friends aforementioned are brutally massacred by a group of Kiowa Indians;it is revealed soon after that Elvis is half-white,half Kiowa,and finds himself on the receiving end of much racist abuse from the same family and local townspeople thereafter.After seeing his parents killed,he decides he's had enough of the hostility he receives for being a half-breed,and reluctantly returns to his mother's people.But after witnessing a Kiowa attack on his brother,he again changes sides and nurses his half-sibling,guiding him by horse into town for medical treatment.But being torn between two races becomes too much for him;he rides into town one more time to bid goodbye to his brother,and rides away,dying,into the valley to see the 'flaming star',like his mother before her passing.All this is very well done,with a convincing performance by Presley.He shows himself perfectly capable of delivering his lines persuasively and effectively,with the right kind of resonance and depth;the number of sad,terrible events that overtake his life are believably conveyed,and he more than holds his own with such reliables as McIntire and Ms Del Rio.If there is a problem with FLAMING STAR,it is so relentlessly solemn and downbeat,with so many tragic events and often brutal killings abound.Siegel does a fine job of the direction (particularly with the action,in which he was always something of a master),but the sheer gloominess of the plot does not make for great entertainment;escapism this definitely isn't.This was probably the reason it wasn't a particular box-office success when first released;Elvis' manager,Colonel Tom Parker (curiously credited as a consultant on the film) apparently got cold feet after FLAMING STAR,and decided to plop Elvis into the fluffy,trite,and later increasingly asinine musicals for which he became so familiar with the next film onwards,in which all virtually had the same plot.Presley himself tired of this,and stopped making films in 1970.This was a considerable shame as Elvis certainly proved he was a perfectly good movie actor in this and his two other best films (as mentioned previously); if the script,production team,supporting cast and story were up to scratch.Post-FLAMING STAR,he rarely at all got the chance to work with anything like this quality,and although the King of rock n'roll was never the King of movie acting,subjects like FLAMING STAR proved that he was by no means a peasant or commoner when decent material was at his disposal.It is something of a tragedy that the Colonel didn't present him with such after this film.RATING:6 and a half out of 10.

Easily Presley’s most satisfying film overall and a first-rate if slow-moving Western in its own right which, once again, benefits from the assured guiding hand of a strong director who is an expert of tough action to boot. Curiously enough, some sources give its running-time as being 101 minutes but the DVD version I watched is only 92 minutes long!For the record, the lead role was originally intended for either Frank Sinatra or Marlon Brando (for whom Nunnally Johnson specifically wrote the script), but against all expectations, Presley gives an excellent, brooding portrayal of a half-breed (for which he was even inducted in a Native American society!); Barbara Steele was supposed to have played the female lead but proved unsatisfactory during a screen test (the principal film-makers reportedly didn’t want her from the outset because she was taller than Elvis and also since, in their view, she couldn’t act but the Chairman of Fox was clearly rooting for her behind the scenes!) and she was eventually replaced by Barbara Eden. Frankly, I feel that Steele would have been miscast anyway in this secondary role and, thankfully, the direct result of her missing out on this film was her iconic performance in Mario Bava’s Italian horror classic BLACK Sunday (1960) and a subsequent career as the reigning “Scream Queen” of Italian Gothic horror films!The title tune, naturally sung by Elvis himself, is very good (the “Flaming Star” being the Indian sign for impending death) and Presley was originally supposed to sing 10 songs throughout the film but, given its unusually somber tone, wiser heads prevailed and these were reduced to just two, which were then disposed of within the very first reel! Unsurprisingly perhaps, the end result of all this was that FLAMING STAR underperformed at the box office and Presley would basically never again be allowed to stray from the tried-and-true “formula” or develop his burgeoning thespian skills in dramatic pictures.Anyway, to get to the film’s plot proper: Presley’s family comprises white folk John McIntire and Steve Forrest (Dana Andrews’ brother) and an Indian mother, movingly played by Dolores Del Rio. Rodolfo Acosta appears as the aggressive new Kiowa chief who wants Presley to join him in his fight against the white man while, on the other hand, the whites also ask Forrest to choose sides. Eventually, this leads to much confrontation (also familial) and bloodshed – culminating in Elvis’ showdown with his tribe which actually occurs offscreen, and the film’s surprisingly downbeat ending is all the more effective because of it. Incidentally, that same year saw another Western in which a family is despised by the townspeople because of their mixed blood – John Huston’s THE UNFORGIVEN, which I should be rewatching soon in honor of the 20th anniversary of its director’s passing...