Tonight's movie was "Major Dundee" (1965), a 136 minute Western directed by Sam Peckinpah, whose much shorter "Junior Bonner" (99 minutes) we enjoyed and reviewed last night. We noted that even though the film had very little in the way of story, Peckinpah managed to make it entertaining by keeping things moving.
This time, with "Major Dundee"? Not so much.
I mean, yikes! This movie got so slow by the 100 minute mark that it almost ground to a halt. I only stuck it out to the finish because I had already invested so much time.
Note to self : don't do that anymore. If a movie starts to suck, and still sucks fifteen minutes later, turn it off. Life is too short. Sitting through the last hour of "Major Dundee" was excruciating, and as Sheriff Bart said to The Waco Kid : "Why you do that to yourself"? I have no legitimate answer to that question tonight, except to say that I had already watched the first 90 minutes, 75 of which weren't bad, so when the next 15 began to suck - as if somebody pulled the plug from the production - I kept watching only because I hoped the film would recover.
My new rule, stated above, will prevent me from making that mistake ever again.
I am loathe to go into a lengthy description of "Major Dundee" because I am wiped out from watching it, but I will try to give you the basics of the beginning. In 1864, in Arizona Territory, the Apaches have annihlated a settler's camp. The adults have been tortured and the children taken away to be raised "Apatch", as the white men pronounce it. In depicting this massacre, Peckinpah shows a preview of the blood and guts approach he will use to maximum effect in the heralded (but crummy) "The Wild Bunch" four years later.
Charton Heston is an Army Major, relegated to captaining an Arizona prison camp due to his insubordinations during the Civil War. When he gets word of the civilian slaughter by the Apaches, he vows on the spot to avenge it, and to bring the stolen children back home as well.
Sounds like a good plot for a Western, eh? Maybe even a classic one, when you have a cast that includes not only Chuck Heston but also Richard Harris in a co-starring role as a Confederate prisoner in Heston's charge, Jim Hutton as a by-the-book Lieutenant, James Freakin' Coburn as a one-armed scout, and a slew of Great Western supporting actors including everyone from Ben Johnson to Slim Pickens to Dub Taylor to R.G Armstrong.
What could go wrong with a cast like that?
Plenty, because the director was Sam Peckinpah. His success with "Junior Bonner" notwithstanding, I am beginning to wonder if he wasn't one of the most overrated filmmakers in motion picture history. I am gonna ask you to do the reviewing work for me tonight. Do you think you could do that, just this once? All I need you to do is to go to IMDB, look up "Major Dundee" and scroll down to the bottom of the page, where there will be a single review posted by a random viewer. Now, this movie has an inexplicably high rating of 6.8. There are nearly 75 reviews in all, and many of the reviewers give the film high marks but then qualify their praise by calling the movie a "flawed masterpiece" or something of that nature. These are the folks who think Peckinpah was a genius, and even they say, "well, it's a great movie but".....
What I want you to do, is to use the link at the bottom of the page that says "see all reviews", and to then scroll through them until you come to the occasional ones that give "Dundee" 3 out of 10 Stars, or right around that level. The reviews that agree with what I am telling you. There are several of them within easy scrolling distance.
Please read a few of those, because they will tell you everything you need to know about "Major Dundee", including how Charlton Heston had to assume the directorial duties at one point because Sam Peckinpah became so dissolute that he wasn't even showing up on set anymore. Peckinpah loved Mexico, where the movie was filmed, because he could indulge himself there in undisclosed ways that weren't possible in the United States. If I am not mistaken, he wound up living there.
According to one reviewer, Heston was so worried that the film would not get finished that he donated his salary so that production could continue. Another reviewer says that in his autobiography, Heston spends more time talking about "Major Dundee" than any other film he worked on, because it was such a debacle. He said that Sam Peckinpah was making the film up as he went along, and it shows.
Unbelievably, he actually had a halfway decent picture happening until the 65 minute mark.
You've heard me say that "such-and-such movie" was 15 minutes too long, or maybe 20. On rare occasion maybe even 30.
"Major Dundee" was 50 to 70 minutes too long, depending on your tolerance level. But the thing is, it actually could have been a good movie (not great but good), even in the hands of Peckinpah, had he not been such a crazy s.o.b.
I mean, he is still not even close to being a great director, even if he had completed "Major Dundee" and made it into a decent film. I reiterate this opinion because I detest what I will call "critical hipness" that says a filmmaker is great simply because he was an outrageous person.
Sam Peckinpah was a technically talented director who made films that were okay at best. His image, of a rough and tumble outlaw, so outweighs the quality of his movies that it's a shame he has been raised to legendary status.
This is not to denigrate the man as a person, but just to say that the critics - as usual - are vastly wrong.
I'd have been better off watching "Crocodile Dundee" than "Major Dundee".
See you in the morning. Don't watch movies that suck, and I'll try to take my own advice on that score too.
xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxooxoxoo :):)
No comments:
Post a Comment