Well I'd like to be as confident as some of the reviewers here who thought the movie was just great but there are too many flaws in the picture to get that positive about it. I thought MacKenna (Gregory Peck) offered a pretty good hook for the story early on when he told Colorado (Omar Sharif) that "we can play some poker along the way". It gave the impression that there would be some compelling battle of wits here between the good guy and the bad guy, but sadly the story just didn't come together that way for me. And speaking of Sharif's character, he was supposed to be Mexican, right? So why not Juan instead of John? Still wondering about that one.
If you wanted to come up with an all star Western movie cast I don't think you could have done a better job than this one, but boy, what a sad waste of talent. When the opening credits mentioned 'The Men From Hadleyburg' I was all set for something really special, and with Lee J. Cobb, Raymond Massey, Burgess Meredith, Anthony Quayle, Edward G. Robinson and Eli Wallach in the lineup, there was no way there should have been any disappointment. Sadly, I was proved wrong, and I haven't even mentioned Keenan Wynn and Telly Savalas yet.
If not for the presence of Julie Newmar, this might have been a real downer. I can't say for sure if she really did her swim scene in the nude, but at least that was a nifty diversion to take one's mind off the rest of the story. One of the things that really brought things down for me were the close-up riding scenes with Lancaster and Sharif, utilizing rear projection photography. When I see that in a picture I always ask myself why they couldn't have taken the actors outside and put them on a horse for real. What would be so hard about that?
As far as the resolution to the story, this is where things take a real slide down hill, both literally and figuratively. When the ground started shaking apart and the mountain walls started separating I was reminded of the way all those cheesy prehistoric dinosaur flicks come to an end before the hero makes it out of harm's way. The film makers must have thought the idea was pretty cool because a couple of the same scenes were repeated more than once, which only served to lengthen the movie a few minutes more than it needed to.
Sorry I can't be more positive about things but that's just the way it goes sometimes. I guess every actor winds up with a clunker every now and then, too bad so many otherwise great actors would up in this one all at the same time.
If you wanted to come up with an all star Western movie cast I don't think you could have done a better job than this one, but boy, what a sad waste of talent. When the opening credits mentioned 'The Men From Hadleyburg' I was all set for something really special, and with Lee J. Cobb, Raymond Massey, Burgess Meredith, Anthony Quayle, Edward G. Robinson and Eli Wallach in the lineup, there was no way there should have been any disappointment. Sadly, I was proved wrong, and I haven't even mentioned Keenan Wynn and Telly Savalas yet.
If not for the presence of Julie Newmar, this might have been a real downer. I can't say for sure if she really did her swim scene in the nude, but at least that was a nifty diversion to take one's mind off the rest of the story. One of the things that really brought things down for me were the close-up riding scenes with Lancaster and Sharif, utilizing rear projection photography. When I see that in a picture I always ask myself why they couldn't have taken the actors outside and put them on a horse for real. What would be so hard about that?
As far as the resolution to the story, this is where things take a real slide down hill, both literally and figuratively. When the ground started shaking apart and the mountain walls started separating I was reminded of the way all those cheesy prehistoric dinosaur flicks come to an end before the hero makes it out of harm's way. The film makers must have thought the idea was pretty cool because a couple of the same scenes were repeated more than once, which only served to lengthen the movie a few minutes more than it needed to.
Sorry I can't be more positive about things but that's just the way it goes sometimes. I guess every actor winds up with a clunker every now and then, too bad so many otherwise great actors would up in this one all at the same time.