The Undefeated (1969)

In the days following the Civil War, Union colonel John Wayne leads his men west to gather and sell wild horses while his counterpart Confederate colonel Rock Hudson, disgusted with the actions of carpetbaggers in the south, gathers his family and neighbors to caravan to Mexico to help the French in their invasion. The two groups meet on their disparate paths south. As a fan of Hudson, he was the main draw for me to watch this film, but from a modern perspective, his character is fairly dislikable in the film. In fact, the film glorifies the Southern cause to uncomfortable degrees. I preferred John Wayne’s character here over some of his other work I’ve seen, but even he was uncomfortably sympathetic to the Confederates.