The Half-Breed

There is a passage in the Shakespeare play " A Midsummer Night's Dream "that refers to the imaginary play of Pyramus and Thisby as being both " brief and tedious" .It would serve well as a description of this quite awful piece of garbage from the early 50's as well . The eponymous hero is Charley Wolf who is part white and part Apache and who seeks to maintain the existing uneasy peace between the two races in San Remo .He is helped by a former Confederate officer ,turned gambler (Robert Young ).The local Indian agent is a devious and corrupt individual who is seeking to get the Apaches evicted from their reservation in order to get at the gold which lies hidden there .The relationship between Wolf and his ally is shattered by their competing for the affections of the same girl -a saloon singer . The script is dire and the acting woeful ;in particular the slow and over emphatic delivery of the white actors playing Native Americans is tedious .Young -a capable enough player in other movies -looks out of sorts in the Western setting. Add muddy colour and a clichéd script and the result is racist tedium and unrelenting dullness .