Major Dundee

Exciting and enjoyable Western with a very fine cast , luxurious cinematography and gorgeous outdoors from Mexico . This cultured actioner Western contains impressive feats , dashingly violent scenes , rider pursuits , breathtaking Indians attacks and loads of crossfire .Interesting and mythical film follows a misfit group across Mexican territory to chase a renegade Apache called Sierra Charriba who is loosely based on the real-life Apache warrior chief Vittorio . It is set during the last winter of the Civil War, cavalry officer Major Amos Charles Dundee (Charlton Heston) leads a contentious troop of Army regulars along with a band of Confederate prisoners led by Captain Benjamin Tyreen (Richard Harris) who volunteer to go into Mexico and track down a band of rampaging Apache Indians .

This is a flawed but watchable Peckinpah including thrills , emotion , shootouts , go riding and a love story between Heston and Senta Berger. An overlong film , approx. 124 minutes , being severely cut from its premiere , and directed with typical verve by the great Sam Peckinpah . Rich in texture and including intelligent screenplay full of incredibly lyrics scenes . Taut excitement throughout , beautifully photographed and spectacular bloodletting . Vibrant as well as brilliant all-star-cast displays exceptional performances . Very good acting by main actors , as Heston as tough officer leading assorted misfits against Apaches and Richard Harris as two-fisted rebel Confederate . Although Charlton Heston famously did not get along with Richard Harris, who frequently stayed up drinking into the early hours and was often late on set. During filming, Sam Peckinpah was so obnoxious and abusive towards his actors that Charlton Heston actually threatened the director with a saber ; Heston later remarked that this was the only time he had ever threatened anybody on a movie set . Lavish production by Columbia Pictures that wanted to dismiss Sam Peckinpah but Charlton Heston convinced it not to, when he threatened to return his $300,000 fee and leave the project. Support cast is frankly well , plenty of familiar faces . Many of the actors who came to be known as the "Sam Peckinpah Stock Company" appeared in this film and four years later in Sam Peckinpah's Wild Bunch (1969): Warren Oates, Ben Johnson, L. Q. Jones, Dub Taylor, Aurora Clavel, Enrique Lucero. Furthermore , other actors regular in Western movies and Peckinpah films as James Coburn , R. G. Armstrong , Karl Swenson , Michael Pate and John Davis Chandler. Atmospheric and evocative musical score by Daniel Amfitheatroph . Glimmer and evocative cinematography in Panavision by excellent director of photography Sam Leavitt , though Peckinpah, replacing his ordinary cameraman Lucien Ballard, with whom he had had a good working relationship since "Ride the high sierra" (1962) .

The motion picture was spectacularly directed by Peckinpah , though he downed it , being strongly cut by producers . After the success of Sam Peckinpah's later Wild Bunch (1969), Columbia Pictures told him they would allow him to re-shoot parts of this film that had been cut from the released version , Peckinpah, eventually, declined the offer .

Originally intended as a searing epic by director Sam Peckinpah, Major Dundee was taken away from his guiding hands post production and edited into an almost incoherent mess. Here in the new millennium we are able to see a restoration of the film with added scenes that gives the film are more cohesive structure, and yes it improves the film ten fold because the characters have flesh on their bones. Yet still we are only really glimpsing three parts of Peckinpah's vision since there is another 30 minutes of film seemingly lost forever, and that is a crying shame because this film could have been a Western masterpiece had it been allowed to flourish.

There is still a lot to enjoy here though, Major Dundee leads a rag tag army of Union soldiers, Confederate rebels, convicts, loonies, and a one armed James Coburn into Mexico to hunt down an Apache army who are responsible for deadly attacks on U.S. bases in Texas. It's not so much "The Dirty Dozen", but more like the dirty army! And in the main here it's the fractious nature of this assembled army that gives the film its vigour and selling point. Almost certainly the film is one of the forerunners of Vietnam allegories, and like it or not it's the thematic undercurrent of soldiers under prepared that keeps the pic above average.

The cast are fine, it's like a roll call for the macho assembly, Charlton Heston is Dundee, a big square jawed brash man who tries to keep this army in line whilst dealing with his own nagging ego. Richard Harris owns the film as Tyreen, his on going personal war with Dundee gives the film added impetus. James Coburn plays a very interesting character, but it's a character that demands more time on screen than we actually get (perhaps the victim of the cretinous cuts?), and it leaves a hankering feeling that never quite leaves you.

It's a fine journey, it's a fine character piece, and everyone also note that the wide screen shoot is gorgeous, but at the end of the day Major Dundee is only hinting at the genius that would deliver The Wild Bunch four years down the line and Straw Dogs two years later, but it could have been so very different...

Forgive them for they know not what they do. 7/10

The first half of "Major Dundee" is gripping and fascinating. The problem is that the second half doesn't deliver on the build-up. The whole point is supposed to be the pursuit of the Apache, yet the film spends more time getting sidetracked from all this, in particular the scenes of Dundee's injury and descent into drunkenness (and did we really need Senta Berger, since her role is really pointless, despite the visual scenery she adds?) and when the Apache is found, it happens too abruptly. Fascinating supporting characters disappear or are downplayed too much in the second half, and the ending is too abrupt as well. Since the expedition ends up returning after the surrender of Lee and the end of the War, I was surprised there was no scene of Dundee returning to the Fort and offering a final reflection on Tyreen. The film literally cried out for it.

Charlton Heston felt that Dundee should have been more about the issues of the Civil War and had they stuck to this approach all through the film we might have had a great film instead of a merely good one.

A textbook example of how a penny-pinching producer can ruin a potentially great movie by basically sandbagging its (admittedly truculent) director, MAJOR DUNDEE nevertheless works as an answer of thoughts to the glorious Cavalry westerns of John Ford. Sam Peckinpah, on his third film overall and first one with a large-scale budget, was somehow able to pull a good film out of his controversial hat, thanks in no small part to his cast.

Heston plays an ambitious, ego-driven warden of a prison outpost in New Mexico in the closing months of the Civil War. When a rampaging band of Apache slaughter a family at a nearby ranch and then take apart a regiment he sends out to destroy them, Heston sees his way to get out of his routine job and get promoted. But to do this, he must form a garrison of troopers comprised of civilians, blacks, and Confederate prisoners. One of the latter is Ben Tyreen (Richard Harris), who had once been his friend but is now his worst enemy. Furthermore, his pursuit of the Apache, once it starts, will take the troopers across the Rio Grande into French-occupied northern Mexico. Now, they'll not only have to worry about hunting down the Apache and keeping the peace amongst themselves, they also have to worry about French lancers.

Despite the film being butchered so maliciously to the point where many critics rightly complained about its incoherence, plus a marital music score that Peckinpah detested royally (he could have used Jerry Goldsmith here), MAJOR DUNDEE succeeds by pulling out as many stops as it can. It benefits from being shot almost exclusively on ___location in Mexico (under truly ghastly conditions, which would have happened even without studio interference). The photography by Sam Leavitt is also quite good (though, in another case where the producer overrode the director, Peckinpah couldn't use his favorite cameraman Lucien Ballard on the shoot). And there are those moments of violence and bloodshed that predate, though in a more 'PG-13' fashion, Peckinpah's next film, the far more violent 1969 epic THE WILD BUNCH.

Heston is as good as ever in the title role. But surprisingly, he is nearly matched on screen by Harris, who plays his role as an Irish supporter of the Confederacy with great dash and insight. James Coburn also does good journeyman work as the one-armed scout Sam Potts. Peckinpah rounds out the cast with his Usual Suspects: Warren Oates, Ben Johnson, R.G. Armstrong, L.Q. Jones, John Davis Chandler, Slim Pickens, and Dub Taylor.

In spite of all its flaws, MAJOR DUNDEE is still quite viewable, which is why I rank it an 8 out of 10.

NOTE: In 2005, for its 40th anniversary re-release, Sony Pictures released an extended version of MAJOR DUNDEE on DVD, with twelve minutes of footage once thought irretrievably lost placed back in; and they've replaced the original marital music score in favor of one by Christopher Caliendo. It is closer to what Peckinpah had in mind, but with thirty minutes of additional footage irretrievably lost, there's no telling whatsoever how much better this film might have been had Peckinpah not been sandbagged. Nevertheless, it still stands as a slightly flawed but never dull Civil War western.

The problems behind the scenes of this Civil War-era western (director vs producer over final cut, director's excesses and delays causing budget issues) are legendary. Thankfully, though the finished product is far from perfect, enough good things remain to make the film watchable and entertaining. Heston plays the square-jawed title character, an action-loving soldier who resents being put in charge of a prison camp. When a local settlement is slaughtered by Apaches, he must set out to rescue three captured boys but finds that he can't do it alone and must rely on a ragtag assortment of helpers. One of the few "real" officers he gets is Hutton as a rather bumbling, by-the-numbers lieutenant. He fills out his party with several Confederate prisoners, notably Harris as an embittered Captain, one-armed scout Coburn, several Negro Union soldiers led by Peters and various criminals and degenerates including Taylor and Pickens. Heston and Harris forge a very uneasy alliance as they head south into Mexico to retrieve the captives. They stumble onto the remains of a village in which curvy Berger is tending to the sick and dying. Needless to say, she sparks the interest of both Heston and Harris, only adding to their enmity. Eventually, the motley band of soldiers finds itself hunting Apaches while being hunted by French soldiers who are occupying Mexico. This escalates into an almost impossible situation when Heston's group reaches a river with the enemy both in front of and behind him. All the elements for a grand-scale, epic story are in place, but it falls short of excellence because of the problems in the editing room. Heston is great as the damaged, but heroic Major. Harris, though oddly cast and sporting that goofy blue eyeshadow he favored in the 60's, is also strong and the two make great adversaries. Coburn's role is smaller, but he gives it impact. Berger's role epitomizes the words decorative and obligatory, but she is luminous, especially when she isn't continuously yanking on her shawl (which happens VERY often!) The cast is chock full of excellent actors who enhanced many western films and television series. Oates has a nice turn as a Confederate who tests Heston's mettle (though he is referred to many times as a boy and was 37 years old!) Anderson is very endearing as a young bugler who becomes a man during the conflict. (Palacios, who plays his love interest, married director Peckinpah after this.) The primary problems seem to come in the mid to late section of the film when many things happen to the characters in swift succession and it's hard to completely gather their motivations and the timing of the actions. This section was clearly cut, haphazardly, and it weakens the narrative and the pace of the film. (Note Heston's sudden beard which appears out of nowhere.) Also, some of the battle sequences are edited so choppily that it's difficult to see who's being killed off! One must just assume, from whoever's left at the end, that the rest of the characters didn't make it. Still, the action scenes in the film are excitingly staged and the actors go a long way in putting the story across. Though it is rarely shown in widescreen, that format is a must for fully appreciating the camera-work and composition of the film. Heston, who admired (but tangled mightily with) Peckinpah, wound up making no money for his work as he put up his salary to help defray the cost overruns.