“Here is a movie so fiercely fixed in its director's obsessive modes of confrontation and combat, that it is not immediately perceived as a Western. O'Meara (Rod Steiger) is a frustrated warrior, and Run of the Arrow starts as a war film in which this Irish Confederate soldier fires the last bullet of the Civil War, hitting but not quite killing a Yankee. Peace means emptiness for O'Meara's intransigent soul: he is an archetypal American, burdened by another national identity and a brutal chip on his shoulder that prompts nearly constant action. ‘There is no cure for what ails thee,' his mother tells him, and so he heads west, into Indian territory, to see if he can become that ultimate outsider, a native American.
“As in so many Fuller films, there is a fascinating meeting of different races, as well as a condensed tribute to the nobility of Indian ruthlessness and a diagram of how native Americans were betrayed by the military, the pioneers and the politicians of new nationhood. O'Meara's turmoil comes from the fury that being American is not just a matter of freedom and bravery, it is a fresh occasion for domination and exploitation. But Run of the Arrow is most compelling as a late example of action being used to define and settle moral doubt, even if the action seems pathological. This was always a keystone of the Western, but it survives today only as the nostalgic source of frivolous car-and-fist fights in most Burt Reynolds and Clint Eastwood movies. Fights were once movie staples; now we know how fixed and tricked they are, and they are as camp as Rocky. But for Fuller a fight is always emotion in action.” David Thomson