Major Dundee

"Major Dundee" is a Western hard to classify, in part because of some deliberate ambiguity in vision characteristic of director Sam Peckinpah's later work, in part from trying to force too much into too small a space. The result is a picture deeply flawed though never uninteresting.

The concept is terrific, anyway: In the waning days of the American Civil War, an Apache raiding party attacks a Union force and makes off with three small boys. Chasing them, with a mixture of Union, captured Confederate, and irregular civilian forces, is one Major Amos Dundee (Charlton Heston), a reckless albeit humane seeker of the same kind of glory that led George Custer to Little Bighorn a decade hence.

It's a big role tailor-made for Heston, who fills the part in his singular ham-on-wry way, going for the big moment even when delivering the smallest of lines, doing so with the kind of nuance and wit that carries you along for the ride. Heston imitators like Phil Hartman must have had a field day watching as Heston, stripped to his undershirt but still wearing a manly neckerchief, tells his head scout (James Coburn): "Don't get yourself killed. That would inconvenience me."

Also terrific is Richard Harris as the leader of the captured Confederates, Tyreen, a fellow more noble than Dundee but nursing an even more bloated sense of wounded pride. Harris was another blowhard actor who overdid it a lot but nails it here. Between Dundee and Tyreen is much of the film's central conflict. To Peckinpah's credit the early scenes showcasing this tension are every bit as tense and exciting as the action sequences later on.

Peckinpah even gets great service from such disparate elements as comic actor Jim Hutton (who doesn't seem to belong in a Peckinpah picture, yet makes it work here as a befuddled lieutenant with able help from Heston), location shooting in Mexico, and skysets that sometimes call to mind David Lean's work on "Lawrence Of Arabia."

Peckinpah was trying to make the same kind of epic as "Lawrence," vast in scope and profound in message. Here "Dundee" gets into serious trouble. As Dundee's band rides on, the script ambles off into strange directions, shoehorning a romance and a drinking binge for Dundee that pulls us away from the central story even as that mutates into twin conflicts with the Apaches and the French, all resolved in a rushed and unsatisfying fashion. Minor characters, played by name talents like Dub Taylor and Slim Pickens, are established as if they herald things to come, only to completely disappear instead. The theme music is as ill-fitting as Coburn's phony beard.

By all accounts Peckinpah eventually lost interest in "Major Dundee," and the result is a film that never finds its way. But it is never dull, and often arresting, especially as it gives Heston one of his broadest acting canvases. Dundee would be unsympathetic in almost anyone else's hands, but Heston gives him a humanity that draws him closer, and makes his foibles more real to us, even to some degree shared, as we watch every other character in the film round on him sooner or later and find ourselves pulling for Dundee even when he's wrong.

However lacking in discipline "Dundee" is, you can watch it over and over and come away entertained and with a different feeling each time, which shows something was working. A problem picture, yes, but one with a lot of heart, soul, and vision, a failed experiment but one worth experiencing all the same.

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.

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

In 1864, the Apache warriors led by Sierra Charriba slaughter a Union troop of soldiers and a family of settlers. They abduct their three sons and flee to Mexico. Major Amos Charles Dundee (Charlton Heston), who was disgraced at the Battle of Gettysburg and sent to a POW outpost in New Mexico, decides to hunt down Sierra Charriba and his Apache seeking for glory. He recruits an army of Confederate prisoners-of-war, black soldiers, a reverend that knows the boys and outcast people (thieves, drunken etc.) and chases the Apache group seeking also revenge, crossing illegally the border with Mexico.

The restored version of "Major Dundee" is a good film directed by Sam Peckinpah. The story of revenge and seeking glory by a stubborn officer has great moments, mainly the constant friction between Union and Confederate soldiers that are forced to team-up. The lack of chemistry between Charlton Heston and Senta Berger in an unnecessary romance could have been edited. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "Juramento de Vingança" ("Vengeance Oath")

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.