This moving western has Yankee colonel Henry Thomas joining forces with Confederate official named Langdon, during the post-Civil War and in Mexican territory . Wayne tries to sell wild horses to the French military in Mexico and Hudson leading a wagon train to Durango . Both colonels battling it out side by side across miles of adventure. They are fighting off arrogant Yankee carpetbaggers with their uppity blacks. Meanwhile their slaves are obedient, quietly waiting for the future as the master gives a family heirloom to an old slave. The two hours pass quickly, and it's a film to make you think (about the nature of war against your fellow countrymen, about loyalty, friendship and heroism).

After the Civil War, ex-Union Colonel John Henry Thomas (John Wayne) is leading his horses to be sold to the Mexican government. In the meanwhile, ex-Confederate Colonel James Langdon (Rock Hudson) is leading a rag-tag group of southerners who are going south to escape the Yankee mob. Both groups decide to join up as they fight off bandits and revolutionaries.This is a southerners wet dream. The southern forces are noble, honorable, and full of hospitality. They are fighting off arrogant Yankee carpetbaggers with their uppity blacks. Meanwhile their slaves are obedient, quietly waiting for the future as the master gives a family heirloom to an old slave.This is through and through an old fashion western where men are men. They have a good old fight after a good stiff drink. There is an impressive herd of horses. If you're willing to live with the hokey story, then this is definitely watchable.

This is a typical late John Wayne western.Wayne is way past his prime,overweight and wearing an obvious toupee.Having said this he still looks like a tough old buzzard who could hold his own in a bar room brawl.Like all of his films the scenery is brilliantly photographed and the action scenes are first rate which cover up the holes in the plot.The musical score is an added bonus.The plot concerns Confederate Colonel James Langdon (Rock Hudson) who with his family and the surviving members of his regiment are heading for Mexico to start a new life offering their services to the Emperor Maximillion.Langdon has burnt his boats or at least his mansion to prevent the carpetbaggers from profiting by it.Meanwhile John Wayne's cavalry have just fought a vicious little skirmish when a rider appears and tells them of Lee's surrender(on a historical note Lee only surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia,a fact that seems to have escaped the Hollywood script writers)Under a flag of truce Wayne goes to inform his Confederate counterpart Major Saunders(Royal Dano)who tells him they already knew.An incredulous Wayne asks why they are still fighting to be told "This is our land Sir and you are on it"."But we are all Americans"replies Wayne."I know Sir"says the one armed Major"that has always been the pity of it".He holds out his one good hand and says "Thank you for your courtesy Sir".That one sequence elevates the whole film to a higher level.Royal Dano only has a brief cameo but is by far the best thing in the entire film.Wayne and his remaining troopers are demobbed,they head west rounding up wild horses with the intention of selling them to Maximillion.Of course the inevitable happens,they meet up with Langdon's ex-Confederates and at one point rescue them from Mexican bandits.Wayne takes a fancy to Colonel Langdon's widowed sister complaining to her that his ex wife is busy giving piano lessons in Boston and that she had been so busy being a lady that she forgot to be a woman.(if all he wanted was a bedroom eyed floozy perhaps he shouldn't have married her in the first place).Later with typical Southern hospitality Wayne and his men are invited to a fourth of July shindig.It all ends in a massive punch up,one of those wonderfully staged brawls that Hollywood seem to do so well.Afterwards,with nobody appearing too seriously hurt both sides agree that they have had a really good time and they all part the best of friends.The Colonel's sixteen year old daughter falls for Wayne's adopted Cherokee Indian son Blue Boy,I won't name the actor who played the part as the proverbial wooden Indian would have done just as well.A bit like this review the plot then meanders but the upshot is that Langdon's Confederates fall into the hands of Mexican revolutionaries who threaten to shoot them unless they persuade Wayne to hand over his herd of horses.Wayne agrees and united they all head back to the United States.Its all rather hard to swallow especially Langdon's acceptance of his daughter's choice of husband.Praise where praise is due,Rock Hudson plays the aristocratic Langdon to perfection with a gloriously over the top Southern accent.Its always good to see Ben Johnson and Harry Carey Jun. and John Agar make blink and you will miss them cameos,I would like to have seen a bit more of them.John Wayne is of course John Wayne,what you see is what you get.All in all an exciting colorful western if all a bit unbelievable.On another historic note General Shelby and several hundred ex- Confederates did go South into Mexico offering their services to the highest bidder.They certainly were not using the 1880-90 weaponry on show in this film.

The title of "The Undefeated" refers to those Confederates who refused to accept defeat in the American Civil War and migrated to Mexico rather than live under the Union. The film is loosely based on a true story, although the details are very much fictionalised. A group of Confederate soldiers, led by Colonel James Langdon, make their way with their families across Texas, hoping to cross the Rio Grande and to join Emperor Maximilian of Mexico, who has offered them land where they can make a new life. Langdon was once a wealthy plantation owner, but has been ruined financially by the war, and before leaving sets fire to his mansion rather than see it fall into the hands of Northerners.On the journey, Langdon meets an old Civil War antagonist, Colonel John Henry Thomas, who is leading a group of his former soldiers on an expedition to capture a herd of wild horses, which he is hoping to sell to the US government. Upon learning, however, that the Mexican government are willing to pay a better price, Thomas and his men also turn south with their captive herd. The film tells the story of what happens when the two groups of Americans, former enemies, are forced to work together to fight off attacks from bandits and from the Juaristas, republican opponents of Maximilian's government.A number of Westerns from this period had a Mexican-related theme and generally involve Americans becoming embroiled in either the Mexican civil war of the 1860s or the Mexican Revolution of the 1910s; others include "The Wild Bunch", "Two Mules for Sister Sara" and "The Professionals", with "Veracruz" being an earlier example from the fifties. The makers of "The Undefeated", however, were less concerned with the intricacies of Mexican politics than they were with putting across a message of American patriotism. Although the Confederates and Unionists have recently been fighting one another, they learn to respect one another and to unite against a common foe. Thomas and his men not only help the Confederates fight the bandits, they also give up their horses to ransom them when they are being held hostage by a Juarista general.The old divisions- North versus South, blue versus grey, abolitionists versus advocates of slavery- no longer matter; the reconciliation between the two groups takes place, very symbolically, at a Fourth of July party. What matters is that former Confederates and former Unionists are all now Americans, united against the world. Even non-whites are included; a romance develops between Thomas's adopted Indian son Blue Boy and Langdon's daughter. The implied message for the Americans of 1969 is that they must learn to overcome their own divisions- conservative versus liberal, young versus old, black versus white, pro-Vietnam war versus pacifists- in a similar way.This message of inclusive patriotism would have been dear to the heart of one of the film's two big stars, John Wayne, who plays Thomas. The following year Wayne was to make another Western, "Rio Lobo", about Northerners and Southerners learning to live together after the Civil War. It is a potentially interesting theme, but not one which this film makes the most of. Rock Hudson's performance as a Southern gentleman has been criticised, but for me he was not the problem with the film. I will leave comment on his accent to those who are more familiar with the dialects of the Deep South than I am, but I found his portrayal of a proud and honourable aristocrat a convincing one. John Wayne, however, had already shown in "The Green Berets" the year before that he was really too old to go on playing a front-line soldier, and he is no more credible here. The film also contains a few other implausible elements. There may have been men in the 1860s who would have had no objection to their daughter entering into a racially mixed marriage, but I doubt if a die-hard Confederate aristocrat like Langdon would have been one of them. The film ends with both Langdon and Thomas on surprisingly good terms with the Juarista General Rojas, even though he has shown himself to be both ruthless and treacherous and has threatened to shoot the Confederates in cold blood if his ransom demands are not met. The film is also overlong and its pace, particularly during the second half, tends to flag.The late sixties and early seventies saw the last great hurrah of the Western before its decline in the late seventies and eighties, but "The Undefeated" cannot compare in quality with some of the other offerings from the period, such as "The Wild Bunch", or Wayne's other film from 1969, "True Grit", or even with "Chisum", another collaboration between Wayne and director Andrew V. McLaglen from the following year. It is marginally better than the non-Western "The Green Berets", but to say that about a film is no very great praise. 5/10