Tell Them Willie Boy Is Here

The 1969 western Tell Them Willie Boy Is Here is available to watch online on iFILM. Robert Redford plays a deputy sheriff pressed into leading a manhunt through the Mojave desert after a young Native American man named Willie Boy kills his girlfriend's father in a confrontation that spun out of control. Director Abraham Polonsky had spent twenty years on the Hollywood blacklist before returning to make this film.

The chase unfolds against a specific political moment: 1909, President Taft's visit to the region, and a press corps hungry for the story. Robert Blake's Willie Boy is not a villain by choice — the film makes that clear early and doesn't flinch from it. Katharine Ross as Lola gives a performance that says more with silence than most westerns manage with gunfire.

Polonsky based the script on Harry Lawton's account of a real 1909 incident. What he made from it is a chase film that keeps asking who the law actually serves. Watch Tell Them Willie Boy Is Here online on iFILM.