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Mar 27, 2015BertBailey rated this title 3 out of 5 stars
Not any more impressed with this now than I was when it came out. It's a ponderous, somewhat self-important 1973 flick, with a heckofalot of posing and more attempted poignancy by the camera and in the acting per speech of dialogue than the script generally warrants or rewards. Conversations sprout out of nowhere, lacking natural flow ...and then 11 people are shot dead. Slim Pickens, Jack Elam, Jason Robards, Katy Jurado, Harry Dean Stanton and Emilio Fernandez put in good if brief appearances, although this last declaims his dying speech with a bit too much elocution and not half enough wounded-to-deathness to my taste. Dylan is pretty much useless, strictly in this to attract more audience, and other than Knocking on Heaven's Door the soundtrack may have authenticity but it's hardly Rozsa or Morricone. Horses seem to've got hurt in making this movie. People don't much care when they're about to die. And there are precious few scenes of stylized violence of the kind Peckinpah was famed for--which might have made things worthwhile. Brief aside, going out on a limb: it's as if Peckinpah has tried to gain from Leone's pasta westerns, but hasn't picked up that lenghthiness without enough real intensity isn't what the Italians brought to the genre. This is from a peculiar era when sexual license was afloat, along with frowning on inhibitions--provided that 95% of it involved the woman's clothes, it was a curious variant on the notion of "liberated." Mostly exposed breasts, strictly for decorative value. Speaking of which, as you might imagine, the locations, costumes and art direction are all better than average, and the image could not be better for pre-digital.