Excellent, Without a doubt!!

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

If you're interested in the topic at hand, you should just watch it and judge yourself because the reviews have gone very biased by people that didn't even watch it and just hate (or love) the creator. I liked it, it was well written, narrated, and directed and it was about a topic that interests me.

Note this is a review of the film as originally released-ie in the version approximately 2 hours long. I haven't seem the longer later versions. However this supposedly inferior version packs quite a punch. Its outstanding qualities for me were firstly a towering performance by Charlton Heston as the eponymous ant-hero. A man who is obsessed with his career as a soldier and is very good at fighting battles. However, apart from his fighting prowess the film progressively reveals him to be an adequate individual in many respects. Heston is excellent at conveying all these features and the character's internal conflicts.Heston "carries this picture but the rest of the cast is usually very good.. I found the persistent superciliousness and airs and graces of Tyreen rather irritating. I think this is mostly due to the screenplay but I think Richard Harris overdid things occasionally.The other noteworthy feature was some truly powerful and exciting (but brutal) battle scenes, particularly those involving cavalry. There are many other scenes involving horses which are usually excellently choreographed-in this respect I feel the film shows the influence of John Ford.The film is interesting also in that is quite complex.-In the sense that there are many different areas of conflict both external and internal. Major Dundee has many enemies of different kinds in the film but it could be said that he is his own worst enemy.I don't think I will dwell too much on the undoubted negatives too much as these have been endlessly dissected already. However the music is not a plus. it is too upbeat and in this sense I feel undermines what the film is saying about the brutality of war.The film is also occasionally incoherent, with some loose ends (eg what happens to "Linda"?). In places it has been brutally and incompetently edited.But for all its defects I have to say that I enjoyed it very much. Well worth watching.

Well, the very combination of western, Civil War movie, love story, even some tawdry comedy and drama is not always as exciting as it can seem. Major Dundee is a very typical period piece, such a movie could have been done in the 60's only, and in the 60's only such dialogs and prolonged battle scenes could be shot. The movie suffers a lot from a very sketchy narration, obviously badly shot battle scenes, some real poor dialogs and some unnatural sentiments and/or drama moments. The movie is not that all bad, as there are some real gorgeous Texan scenes, some cool moments of jail routine, some very fine plot ideas. The very story is nothing new - revenge, duty call, treachery, blood, war. Well, it is OK, well done in most moments. But not that great as it could be Only for Peckinpah's fans

I grew up watching westerns, and saw this one every now and then on TV. Heston played one of my great heroes; a Federal Army Officer commanding a regiment squarely situated with Lincoln's United States, and under the command of General Ulysses S. Grant. He is out in the west, has men of honor under his command, save for the occasional horse thief and rebel.It's a tale of obsession. With Melville as the inspiration and Peckinpah helming the project, how could it go wrong?Well, as the historians on the commentary track reminded me, market forces were at work back at the studio. And so it was that what could have been a historic film about tracking down an Apache war-band, was turned into an overlong film involving a love interest and Imperial French guards.Oh boy.For the most part it's exceptionally staged. The only foible is the story itself. The main plot gets resolved in act two, and so the story falters there. The story also meanders with the love interest, and what started out as a plot driven story regarding justice and revenge in the never-ending struggle between the natives and the white-man, turns into an elongated adventure regarding the life and times of Major Amos Charles Dundee. Instead of a Melville like tale, we get a brief chronology of an army officer as went to resolve one issue, but stirred up others in the process. Huh.So, can we castigate it as a bad film? It's a tough call. I think it's better to say that the film started out on an almost misleading note, but promised on the title; a film about Major Dundee. We get the sense that the film is going to stay on one topic, one plot, one story, but winds up embracing a ton of others.For all that there is a lot of symbolism and deep stuff operating here. We examine Dundee's command decisions and his command detachment to pursue a single minded goal. Note Harris's change in shirts as Heston's character flirts with debauchery. Note the change in landscape as Heston and his forces pursue their goal. Note the uniforms and comment on contemporary social upheavals of the time (as was noted on the commentary track, but yes, I spotted it before it was pointed out).That's not all, there's also a coming of age tale here, as well as a romance (however retrofitted, and I'll go ahead and say it, I don't care how beautiful the Austrian actress is, and she is stunning, her role and tale do not belong).All in all it is an entertaining tale, and the ever sly mind might see the climatic finale as Peckinpah's comment on what power got us embroiled in conflicts involving US forces fighting native contingents. Ring any bells? That could be reading too much into it, but based on what I know about the director, I don't find it too far off the mark.It's almost an ingenious film. It's almost a classic. One could even call it a flawed classic. View it for what it's worth. If it seems somewhat odd, then keep what I told you in mind.

As I slipped the DVD into the machine, my expectations for Major Dundee were sky high. From my point of view, this movie has almost everything going for it: Directed by Sam Peckinpah, one of my favorite directors, A dream cast of Charlton Heston, Richard Harris and James Coburn with a utopia of rich character actors supporting them. Warren Oates, Ben Johnson, Slim Pickens, Dub Taylor, I could go on.. Colorful setting during the Civil War in the Apache country of Maximilian Mexico. Stunning location filming in Mexico. A "frenemy" relationship between Union officer Heston and Confederate officer Harris, who warily join forces to retrieve kidnapped children from the Apaches, fighting their way through brigades of French lancers all the way. This sounded like one of my favorite movies, "Vera Cruz" on steroids. Yet, I have never been so disappointed in a movie as I was in "Major Dundee". It starts off OK, but as it progressed I started to get worried. By the middle of the movie, I decided that I was bored and didn't care about any of the characters. Then suddenly, the plot devolved into a series of almost entirely unrelated vignettes that had very little to do with the first half of the film. I would have laughed out loud at some of the scenes if I hadn't been so thoroughly bored and deflated. The proceedings dragged on for over two hours, although it felt like four hours. It's hardly worth detailing the carnage, but here are some low lights: There is absolutely no chemistry between Heston and Harris. Made me appreciate Burt Lancaster's performance in "Vera Cruz" all the more. Heston is wooden, Harris is miscast. Both looked liked they knew the movie was going to bomb. Coburn has to play the most uncharismatic "super scout" in the history of Westerns. And he commits the cardinal sin of wearing a ridiculous looking cowboy hat. It's hard to even describe the absurd plot directions the movie takes in the second half. There's like two or three different movies going on inside the same movie. I'm used to plot holes in movies, but these were plot black holes. Completely useless narration by bugler. Senta Berger's presence is one of the most gratuitous and implausible romantic subplots in the history of film. Peckinpah-philes like to blame this mess on studio interference. B.S. Nothing could have saved this turkey. 3 out of 10 IMDb rating for me. It fared better in my ranking system due to its great landscapes and colorful background themes, with 13 points, slightly above average.