Bookended by two of the rootingest-tootingest blood and guts shoot-outs you might see in a Western, Sam Peckinoah's revisionist movie is otherwise a story about men out of time, raging against the dying of the light. Set on the eve of the first world war, which explains the presence of gun-running high-ranking German militia, against the backdrop of revolutionary Mexico at the time of Psncho Villa, but encountering for the first time modern contraptions such as a motor car and machine-gun, William Holden's motley cowboy outfit attempts one last heist near the Mexican border, but have to escape over it when the job turns out to be a trap orchestrated by ex-compadre Robert Ryan, who Holden double-crossed once before. Unfortunately for Ryan his posse is the cowboy equivalent of the Keystone Cops, making his U.S. sponsored mission often seen like the blind leading the blind-crazy.
Things head even further south for the bunch when they run into a tin-pot Mexican general and his moveable feast of ragbag soldiers and it would seem traveling women, the latter there it seems to fulfil one purpose only, which test their in-house loyalties and unsurprisingly ends up in an all-time blazing climactic shoot-out where it's fair to say not many get out alive.
Those two action sequences, brilliantly choreographed, if that's the right word, for me however, somewhat overshadowed the rest of the film. While Holden, Ryan and Ernest Borgnine as the three main leads all put in fine performances, I wasn't quite won over by their characters' motivations. I also didn't appreciate the cavalier and blatantly sexist way women were depicted in the movie either.
So while there was much to admire, I have to confess I found little to love in this pumped-up, genre-defining or should that be genre-defying western.
Things head even further south for the bunch when they run into a tin-pot Mexican general and his moveable feast of ragbag soldiers and it would seem traveling women, the latter there it seems to fulfil one purpose only, which test their in-house loyalties and unsurprisingly ends up in an all-time blazing climactic shoot-out where it's fair to say not many get out alive.
Those two action sequences, brilliantly choreographed, if that's the right word, for me however, somewhat overshadowed the rest of the film. While Holden, Ryan and Ernest Borgnine as the three main leads all put in fine performances, I wasn't quite won over by their characters' motivations. I also didn't appreciate the cavalier and blatantly sexist way women were depicted in the movie either.
So while there was much to admire, I have to confess I found little to love in this pumped-up, genre-defining or should that be genre-defying western.