Major Dundee (1965)

"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 ex

Fmovies: Pekinpah's excellent Western which works as standard Cavalry movie, a meditation of loyality and friendship and a study in a dangerous obsession.Heston is very good as the titular Major who will risk everything to catch the raiding Apache's and restore his good name - he is stiff necked and inflexible and plays nicely against Harris's dashing Southern Captain who only wants to get home. It has been compared to Moby Dick with Heston as Ahab and who will stop at nothing to achieve his goal. It has fine support from the usual Pekinpah regular company with epic battle scenes offset by more thoughtful passages - this is the original restored version at 2h13m (on release the studio cut huge chunks out if it) and ranks up there with the very best films he made.

Since the dawn of the film industry, there has always been strife between the camps of artists and money-holders, when getting a product to the public. The second camp always won because they have the money, and the first one mutters in angry silence.

Fortunately, thanks to the techniques of film restoration, art wins in the extended version of "Major Dundee", an once-maligned movie by its studio, critics and moviegoers in 1965. It now gets the red carpet treatment, due to its director/co-writer, Sam Peckinpah, the master of modern action cinema, for better or worse (With the exceptions of Quentin Tarantino, Robert Rodriquez, Kevin Smith, Stephen J. Cannell, Brian Helgeland, Walter Hill and Frank Miller, I feel Sam's understudies don't have the man's sense of romantic individualism).

Near the end of the American Civil War, a vicious Apache, Sierra Charriba (Michael Pate) and his forty-seven warriors have terrorized the New Mexico territories. A faction of the 5th U.S. Cavalry is sent to stop and dispatch them, but Charriba slaughters them, sparing three young boys to be indoctrinated. "Who will you send against me now?" he spits to a dying lieutenant, strung up by his feet.

The answer: Amos Charles Dundee (the gruff, posing Charlton Heston), an Union major demoted to being a prison warden, due to his glory-hounding antics in Gettysburg (not detailed, being one of the film's flaws that'll be addressed later). He doesn't have enough enlisted soldiers to form a hunting party, but he begrudgingly employs some of his prisoners, including drunks, horse thieves and Confederate soldiers.

One of the soldiers is a former friend from West Point, the cavalier, gentlemanly Capt. Benjamin Tyreen (the late, scene-stealing Richard Harris), who questions Dundee's loyalty and pride, along the way, forcing the major to choose the true enemy: Charriba, Tyreen and his Southern born and proud boys or himself?

If the film's a failure, it's an interesting one. Heston is the cast's front runner, but Harris pulls the carpet beneath him (even sucker punches him more than once!!!), giving the film a sharp edge. Fascinating are the other actors, including Jim Hutton (the late father of Oscar-winning Timothy; "The Green Berets") as a too-strict artillery officer; Michael Anderson Jr. ("Logan's Run") as a green, wet-eared bugle boy, the film's narrator; future Oscar-winner James Coburn ("The Great Escape", "Cross of Iron") as an one-armed, half-breed Indian tracker; Senta Berger (also of "Iron") as a sweet but strong village doctor and Brock Peters ("Soylent Green" with Heston; "To Kill A Mockingbird" and the first African-American actor to work on a Peckinpah film) as the leader of free African slaves-cum-Union soldiers.

There's also Peckinpah's stock actors: Ben Johnson, Warren Oates, John David Chandler, L.Q. Jones, Dub Taylor, Slim Pickens and R.G. Armstrong. Yeah, Coburn and Berger are part of them too, since Peckinpah directed "Iron". Plus, Berger's assistant in "Dundee" is played by Begonia Palacios, who would later be the infamous director's second wife.

And there's the film's bad stuff, including characters coming and leaving during important plot points, back story details being scant (Peckinpah co-wrote the screenplay on a tight budget and schedule with Harry Julian Fink, who later co-created "Dirty Harry&quo

Major Dundee fmovies. Major Dundee (1965) was a test of wills between Sam Peckinpah and the studio heads, it was also a proto-type for his true master piece The Wild Bunch. The movie seems to be edited by foreign hands and out of place music has been added to the soundtrack. The most annoying thing about this film (besides the bad editing and music) is the narration, it seems so out of place.

Major Dundee is about a drunken battle harden officer who must lead a rag tag bunch of p.o.w.s, prisoners and calvary men across the southwestern desert and into Mexico searching for some "wild Indians". As they travel further and further across the arid plains, the people within the troop discover death, disease and horror along the way. They also learn something about themselves.

What could have been an epic western drenched in booze and blood was sloppily edited so it theaters could fit in more viewings and the content shocked the movie board. This led to Sam Peckinpah to become disillusioned with Hollywood and drift in and out of television before he got another chance at making another film within the studio system.

Recommended for Sam Peckinpah fans, others need not apply.

Why isn't there a "director's cut" of this movie in DVD format? It's editing caused Sam to disown the finished cut. During production Charleton Heston charged Sam on horseback with saber drawn, quick boomwork averted disaster. He also offered to forgo his salary to get it released. What an inigma. My appreciation is for the accurate depiction of historical details. Horse Cavalry at it's best even to bugle calls. Pre-revisionist accurate depiction of Apache depredations. Maximillian's French vs. Jauristas is also depicted without apology. The whole pathos of Confederate P.O.W.s who galvanized Yankee to serve on the frontier. Good drama with lots of action to keep the story rolling. "Bring it on..." history "in your face". Please, please, please give us a Directors cut DVD. Hollywood are you listening to middle America? JAmes Coburn's cameo as one armed scout is worth the watch alone.

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.