Best movie of this year hands down!

Truly Dreadful Film

Save your money for something good and enjoyable

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.

Entertaining.Set in Mexico in 1917, a band of American adventurers (played by Burt Lancaster, Lee Marvin, Robert Ryan and Woody Strode) is hired to rescue the wife (Claudia Cardinale) of a wealthy man (Ralph Bellamy)from the clutches of a Mexican bandit (Jack Palance). When follow them as they set out into the bandit's territory, and see what they discover there...Good action drama. Essentially a western, even if it is set in 1917. Not exactly a classic though - plot is rather basic with an overly sentimental and trite ending.Performances are mostly decent, though none are brilliant. Burt Lancaster and Lee Marvin are solid in the lead roles. Good work too from Woody Strode, though Robert Ryan is fairly subdued and his character a tad irritating. Worst of the lot is Ralph Bellamy - a rather one-dimensional performance.Did Jack Palance play the villain in every 60s movie? It seems like it.Always good to see Claudia Cardinale...

This was recommended to me by someone as an example of a good traditional western or a revisionist western, and because a couple of faces from Once Upon A Time in the West appear, I thought I'd give it a chance. Frankly I couldn't stand it. It still has the mythological nobility elements that make the old style westerns unappealing to me. And while it is more violent and dirty (yet the heroes are talking about shaving and baths a fair bit--and Marvin shaves not long before impersonating a Mexican bandit) there is something hollow and restrained about it. Bellamy makes for a weak villain. There is a lot of killing, including horses, but it feels forced. Woody Strode might as well be invisible--he is hardly used and when compared to a similar kind of film-the Deserter, where his skin color does become an issue, this is artificial. I will stick with spaghetti.

One more classic upon classics that I watched some decades ago, and also a film I have never been so fond of. I watched it again today, and my feelings are still the very same. Nothing to do with THE WILD BUNCH, even if it takes place in Mexico at the turn of the twentieth century, as did the Peckinpah's film. OK Lee Marvin, Burt Lancaster, Robert Ryan, Woody Strode and Jack Palance worth the watching of this action packed western, but it isn't enough for me. The directing is fine, but really I don't intend to see it again before a long time now. One more thing I'd like to add, something the other users seem not have pointed out. This film, as did THE SAND PEEBLES - shot one year later - are some sort of messages to illustrate the American interventionism in Vietnam. In Bob Wise's film, we see US troops fighting in 1924 China, supporting Nationalists troops against the Communists ones...And in the Brook's film, a bunch of US mercenaries are recruited to "save" a woman, kidnapped from her husband, and who finally prefers the presence of her abductor: Jack Palance...See where I am driving at?

On paper this is a great movie; skillful writer-director, first-rate cast, how can it miss, let me count the ways. For one thing the plot is too close to The Magnificent Seven - a group of American adventurers getting involved in Mexican problems - the difference is of course that the seven worked pro bono and these four professionals are in it for the money. For an 'action' film there is not enough excitement albeit there is action but it's so emasculated that it's like watching a firework display in black and white; the four professionals, each capable of carrying a film alone - even Woody Strode played the lead in Sergeant Rutledge - don't really blend together as a team. In short there are elements lacking and/or sub- standard in all departments. Worth a look but that's about it.