5/10
Passable and slow-moving Western about a prisoner escaped from horrid Confederate prison
14 February 2010
Dirty Western concerns about Macho Callahan (David Janssen) , he is a Confederate inmate in horrible concentration camp called Hooks during American Civil War , 1864 . Macho organizes a mutiny and gets the getaway . As Macho reunites with his old colleague and sets out to murder the person who was responsible for his being in the hard camp . After that , Callahan arrives a town , when in a discussion he murders a man (David Carradine) over a bottle of champagne , the man's wife (Jean Seberg) seeks vendetta . Meanwhile Macho accompanied by his partner (Pedro Armendariz Jr) looks for the man (Lee J. Cobb) who deceived him for killing . Later on , they are pursued by a posse (James Booth , Bo Hopkins and several others) .

This gritty Western produced by Joseph E. Levine contains thrills , action , violence and some blood and gore . The POWs breakout at the beginning result to be the best scenes , they're spectacular and impressively filmed . Offbeat point of view of West , but dialog and situations are bit believable and badly paced with some flaws and gaps . Good main cast as David Janssen plays a soldier hardened by his confinement and enjoyable Jean Seberg who is miscast as spouse seeking revenge against man killed his husband who turns out to be Callahan . As with many of his co-stars throughout his career, Jean Seberg enjoyed working with David Janssen , she said in her book that he had proved very fun company . Prestigious supporting cast though wasted , such as Lee J Cobb, David Carradine , James Booth , Bo Hopkins, and Richard Anderson as Confederate officer , among others . Furthermore, it appears very secondary Diane Ladd as a prostitute , Matt Clark as a Confederate torturer , Anne Revere , James Gammon and the Mexican Hugo Stiglitz . It packs atmospheric musical score by Patrick Williams and mediocre cinematography by Gerry Fisher , as it's really necessary an urgent remastering because of the copy is worn-out . Shot in Durango and the Mexican state of Morelos had a major power outage during the filming of this movie . The motion picture was middling directed by Bernard L. Kowalski . He's an usual director of numerous television episodes from the 60s until nowadays and occasionally filmmaker for cinema as ¨SSsss¨, ¨Stiletto¨ and his biggest hit ¨Krakatoa : East of Java¨. The picture is only for Jean Seberg fans . Rating : 4.5/10 , average.
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