In Pursuit of Honor

In the 1930s, the U.S. Army is replacing its horse cavalry with armored vehicles, and orders come down that the now-surplus mounts are to be shot rather than kept. A group of cavalrymen refuses to carry out the culling. Led by Sergeant John Libbey and Lieutenant Marshall Buxton, they take several hundred horses and set off toward Canada, pursued by soldiers under orders to stop them or destroy them. Those orders, and the fate of the men who disobeyed them, become a public controversy after the daughter of the unit's former commanding officer takes up the case.

Directed by Ken Olin, this 1995 HBO television film was his second feature behind the camera, following White Fang 2: Myth of the White Wolf the year before. The screenplay is by Dennis Lynton Clark, with Anne Hopkins producing. Don Johnson and Craig Sheffer head the cast as the two soldiers, alongside Gabrielle Anwar, Rod Steiger, James B. Sikking as Douglas MacArthur and Bob Gunton.

On IMDb, the film holds a rating of 7 out of 10 from around 2,000 votes, indicating a durable if modest following. The rating of 5.8 out of 10 on TMDB, drawn from roughly 30 votes, rests on a far smaller sample and points to a much more mixed response. The gap between the two is largely a matter of how many viewers each figure represents.