Influenced by John Ford's "The Lost Patrol", and a precursor to Robert Aldrich's "The Dirty Dozen", Gordon Douglas' "Only The Valiant" sees a group of US soldiers attempting to defend Fort Invincible from Apache Indians. These soldiers are sketched as a likable bunch of misfits, criminals and malcontent. The Apaches, of course, are portrayed as a cartoonish horde of savages.Gregory Peck's always been a stiff, wooden actor. Here he plays Captain Lance, our stoned face poster boy for ethnic cleansing. "Valiant" was released in 1951, sandwiched between "Broken Arrow" and "Broken Lance", two of the first major westerns to portray Native American Indians sympathetically.3/10 – Worth one viewing.

This film was one of the worst waste of good actors that I have ever seen. A terrible movie, about as amateurish as they come, something you might have seen on TV in the late fifties early sixties, terrible script, some great/good actors Peck, Bond, Brand, Young and a few others with no decent lines nor character development and some lousy actors that should never have gotten lines. The directing was slovenly at best, the set was just awful, looked like something out of star trek....oh heck, it had no redeeming features. For anyone to say this film is even mediocre they much have been as drunk as Ward Bond pretended to be. I have seen worse movies but not with so many good actors time totally wasted. This film must have been done as a favor to someone who thought they could write/make a movie...a case of the actors being forced by contract into something hideous. Put it in the trash. I was relieved to read that Peck said it was his least favorite film.

Only the Valiant isn't a great movie, but it is a good one. It is sluggishly paced however, with some parts that feel drawn out, and there were times when the direction was lacking. That said, Only the Valiant is very well shot, the black and white cinematography looks good, and the scenery is authentic. Also good is the score, which is suitably rousing, the script is decently structured and the story is interesting while taking inspiration from Fort Apache and Red River. The acting ranges from decent to very good; I am not a huge Gregory Peck fan(I sometimes find him dull) but he does a good job as the ruthless and tight-lipped martinet officer, and Barbara Payton is luminous and pretty as Cathy. Ward Bond, Gig Young and Jeff Corey are much more impressive though. Overall, not perfect, but worth the look. 7/10 Bethany Cox

Contains spoilers'Only the Valiant' is an example of the 'cavalry film', that sub-genre of the Western that tells the story of the conflict between the US Army and the native Indians of the American West during the second half of the nineteenth century. The central character, Captain Richard Lance, is an Army officer known as a stickler for discipline and for doing everything by the book. Lance is already unpopular with the men under his command, and becomes even more hated when a popular subordinate, Lieutenant Holloway, is killed while leading a dangerous mission to escort Tuscos, a captured Apache chief, to prison. The rumour spreads among the men that Lance deliberately nominated Holloway for the mission because the two were rivals for the hand of the same woman. In fact, Lance wanted to undertake the mission himself and was prevented from doing so by a direct order from his commanding officer, but he never explains this to the men. The Apaches, led by the rescued Tuscos, are preparing for war against the white man, and it looks as though Fort Winston, the fort where Lance is based, will be attacked in overwhelming numbers. Lance volunteers to lead a small detachment of men to hold another fort, Fort Invincible, abandoned after being damaged in an earlier Apache raid. Fort Invincible commands a strategic pass through the mountains; Lance believes that if he and his men can hold it for a few days, this will gain enough time to allow a relieving force to reach Fort Winston. He is allowed to hand-pick the men who will accompany him on this mission, but instead of picking the best men available, he picks the worst, what he calls the 'dregs' of the unit. Each of these has a particular weakness- one is a coward, one a drunk, another a deserter, another a brawler, and so on. Even before the Holloway incident, Lance seems to have had the knack of making enemies and alienating people, and all of these men have good reason to hate both him and one another.The aim of the filmmakers was presumably to produce a 'character-driven' film in which a motley collection of men learn to work together, the idea being that the tale of how a bunch of misfits learn to work and fight together is more interesting than a similar story told about a well-disciplined and motivated crack unit. The film's main weakness is that this concept, as told here, is not really credible. Lance tells the men quite bluntly that he has chosen them for the mission because they are the worst soldiers in the fort, and explains that he has done so because they are the men who can most easily be spared. The whole point, however, is that Fort Invincible must be held for long enough to allow the relieving force to arrive. If this plan succeeds, the whole garrison may be saved. If it fails, Fort Winston is likely to be overrun and the garrison massacred, regardless of the caliber of the men left behind. It therefore follows that Lance would want the best possible men under his command in Fort Invincible, not the worst. It is also unclear why it is never explained to the men that Lance was not responsible for sending Holloway on the fateful mission. If military etiquette would have prevented Lance from disclosing the contents of a conversation with a superior officer, the Colonel himself should have made this clear in order to defuse a situation that was becoming prejudicial to good discipline.Another weakness lies in the character of Lance himself, who is too cold to arouse the viewer's sympathy, even though he eventually turns out to be the man who saves the day and wins the girl. His tactlessness, arrogance and gift for making enemies make him an unlikely leader of men. It seems unlikely that a military unit so riven by feuds and hatred and led by such a martinet could ever accomplish the simplest task, let alone succeed in a highly dangerous mission. I also disliked the way the Indians were portrayed as bloodthirsty, whooping savages, with no attempt made to present their point of view or to understand why they felt such hatred for the white man. The only Indian we hear speak is Tuscos, who makes boastful speeches about how the 'dog soldiers' will be dust beneath the hooves of his horses. This stereotypical view of the American Indian was perhaps not uncommon in films of this period, although even in the early fifties there were movies that took a more liberal view. 'Broken Arrow', for example, had been released a year before 'Only the Valiant'. (Stereotypes, incidentally, are not confined to the portrayal of the Indians. Ward Bond's drunken, garrulous, belligerent Irishman seems to be a character lifted straight from the pages of a music-hall joke book). There are some better features of the film; the stark black-and-white photography, for example, is effective, and some of the battle scenes are well done. On the whole, however, the film is too lacking in credibility and the characters too unsympathetic. This is not one of Gregory Peck's better efforts. 5/10