Sam Peckinpah's crippled film plays best as a dry run for The Wild Bunch.
Comment
10/03/05
Major Dundee (1965)
97
%
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Reviews Counted:29
Fresh:28
Rotten:1
Average Rating:7.2/10
Theatrical Release:Apr 8, 2005 Limited
Synopsis: Sam Peckinpah's dramatic tale of the west, and of revenge. A group of men follow Major Dundee, a officer in the Union Cavalry, down to Mexico to recapture some children kidnapped by Apaches.... [More]
Starring: Charlton Heston, Richard Harris, Jim Hutton, James Coburn
Director: Sam Peckinpah
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Reviews for Major Dundee
Top CriticIt's an ode to the unstable, explosive force that was Sam Peckinpah, as well as to the powerful studio system that crushed him and kept him down.
09/23/05
The new Dundee plugs some of the story holes but, sadly, it's still a plodding affair that's low on plausible character motivation and compelling action scenes.
04/21/05
Peckinpah's first patently runaway-train production seems less a restored classic than a missing link in the breakdown of Hollywood genre hegemony.
04/05/05
Top CriticSam Peckinpah's famously butchered 1965 western, Major Dundee, has been returned to the big screen in a form that is closer to the director's original vision.
04/07/05
Top CriticThe 12 minutes excised from the preview version have been recovered, and they go a long way toward clarifying some of the film's murkier passages.
04/14/05
It's one of those flawed, fascinating films that are somehow more intriguing than many a smooth-cheeked blockbuster.
06/02/05
Top CriticAt its best you can feel Peckinpah, at the twilight of the studio era, dreaming of a far wilder bunch.
04/06/05
Top CriticIt's richer and more interesting, partly because some motivations have been cleared up, partly because the music isn't a burden and partly because we now can see that this was all leading to the creation of a truly great film four years later.
04/22/05
Major Dundee, not a great movie but a great star-driven, big budget 1965 studio western, is back in all its fractured glory and confidence.
04/29/05
Top CriticCharlton Heston is the cavalry officer assigned to eliminate Apache resistance; Peckinpah makes a fine, ironic use of his stentorian presence in what becomes a very grubby context.
01/01/00
Top Critic...it is still incomplete – permanently so, since crucial scenes were never even shot – and the seams show.
04/14/05
The movie still isn't great, but it's an important remonstration to that oldest of all studio-system curses: the producer who thinks he's more creative than the director.
04/08/05
Top CriticIt's gratifying to see Sony expending such effort on an important but admittedly second-tier picture.
04/11/05
Top CriticStill a mess of great scenes sprinkled among some fairly monotonous action. But it's never completely dull.
04/15/05
Top CriticThe restored version becomes a near masterpiece--a most powerful but fragmented western of epic proportions.
04/20/05
It's not a masterpiece, but its story of Civil War enemies banding together for battle against Indian warriors and French soldiers packs an occasional wallop.
04/14/05
This restored version demonstrates is that while it remains an uneven work, it has flashes of brilliance as well as a general air of competence, even elegance in storytelling.
06/11/05
It's hard to imagine The Wild Bunch having the depth and grace it did without Peckinpah having this experience to draw on, and for that masterful film alone we're grateful to have Major Dundee back among the living again.
04/14/05
Top CriticGiddy-up, Western lovers. This one is worth the return engagement.
06/09/05
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