User Reviews

There came a point in the movie when I began wondering to myself, how come John Deakin/Murray (Charles Bronson) is running around loose without scrutiny or in the presence of any of the authority figures, like Marshal Pearce (Ben Johnson) or Major Claremont (Ed Lauter). After all, his face was on a Wanted Poster, and he admitted to being an arsonist and murderer. There was only the very loose explanation that the supply train was winding it's way through uninhabited and dangerous wilderness, but a dangerous guy, I think, would have made a break for it at some point.

But Deakin was not the dangerous guy the viewer is set up for. The picture jumps all of it's characters through some hoops so that they turn out to be somewhat different players than how they started. Only Miss Scoville (Jill Ireland) survives the trip unscathed as the same character, but reviled by the idea that her fiancée and Governor (Richard Crenna) is one of the picture's main villains. I always get a kick out of seeing Bronson and Ireland in the same picture, knowing that they were married in real life, and wondering if they played out their movie roles at home. You know, like tying Bronson's hands behind his back and slapping him around for fun.

Probably the most memorable part of the film is the fight scene between Bronson and Archie Moore! on the train roof-top hurtling along though the mountain pass. By this time, Moore didn't look like he could make his weight limit as a light heavyweight, and he didn't have much in the way of a speaking role, but he did look dangerous. I wonder if that's how his ring opponents saw him without a knife.

Overall, a decent time filler for an action flick, more of a mystery than a Western, and suitably outfitted with rugged countryside that complements the characters of the main players. Alistair MacLean wrote the screenplay based on his own novel, utilizing some of the same elements that brought his more heralded war stories to the screen, like "Where Eagles Dare" and "Force 10 From Navarone".

If bestselling Scottish writer Alistair MacLean and American superstar Charles Bronson appear like a difficult match to imagine, even more so is the "Where Eagles Dare" author penning a murder & mystery set in the Old West on an Army transport train with lots of suspicious characters. Indeed, like "Where Eagles Dare," MacLean wrote the screenplay and the novel. According to Jack Webster's biography of Alistair MacLean, producer Elliot Kastner rescued MacLean from the ravages of a bad marriage and alcoholism, and--quoting Webster--"gave him an idea for a film ("Breakheart Pass") and told him, in his own inimitable way, to get on with it." It seems that Kastner had been the spur for MacLean writing "Where Eagles Dare," too. Veteran stunt coordinator Yakima Canutt wound up his long career with this western. Canutt had served as a stunt man for John Wayne in the Duke's early Hollywood B-oaters, and he performed the hair-raising stunt for Wayne in John Ford's classic western "Stagecoach" (1939) where he leaped onto a team of horses, lowered himself beneath them, and slid under the galloping steeds as well as the coach itself, seizing the rear of the coach, and then crawling back atop it. Terry Leonard recreated this iconic stunt for Harrison Ford in Steven Spielberg's "Raiders of the Lost Ark" in 1981.

"Breakheart Pass" opens with scenic shots of a wood-burning locomotive towing a string of cars through the towering mountains set to Jerry Goldsmith's invigorating orchestral score. Presumably, the grainy look of the credits must have been done to imitate the use of wood carvings in the old West. This effect looked better on the big-screen than it does for the small screen. The mustached Bronson heads an all-star cast of seasoned actors: Richard Crenna, Ed Lauter, Jill Ireland, Ben Johnson, Charles Durning, David Huddleston, Bill McKinney, Rayford Barnes, and Robert Tessier. The craggy-faced star makes his entrance about seven minutes into this yarn wearing an impressive looking black coat and matching black hat with a sloping brim. Literally, he seems like the odd man out in this epic. A diphtheria epidemic has broken out at the frontier Army outpost of Fort Humboldt in the 1870s, and a train hauling medical supplies is in route to the garrison. This relief train has to thread its way through inhospitable mountainous country to deliver the supplies. Although the train consists largely of Army personnel only, a luxurious private car carries Nevada Governor Richard Fairchild (Richard Crenna of "Catlow"), and his fiancée Marica (Jill Ireland of "Death Wish 2") who turns out to be the daughter of the camp commandant. At the small whistle stop settlement of Myrtle City, Deputy U.S. Marshal United Nathan Pearce (Ben Johnson of "Hang'em High") explains that he wants to catch a ride with them because he must pick up a prisoner, Levi Calhoun (Robert Tessier of "Hard Times"), being held at Fort Humboldt. Major Claremont refuses to take him until a stranger, John Deakin (Charles Bronson of "The Magnificent Seven"), is accused by another player of cheating at cards. The Reverent Peabody (Bill McKinney of "Deliverance") shows Pearce a wanted poster for Deakin. Aside from a two-thousand-dollar bounty on his head, Deakin is also wanted for arson, murder, and blowing up a consignment of weapons bound for the Presidio. Now, Pearce argues that he has Army business. Reluctantly, Claremont allows Pearce and his prisoner to board the train. Before the train is scheduled to leave after tanking up on water in Myrtle City, two Army officers, Captain Oakland (Read Morgan of "Fatal Beauty") and Lieutenant Newell (Robert Rothwell of "El Dorado") vanish without a trace. Earlier, Major Claremont (Ed Lauter of "The Longest Yard") had given Oakland a message meant for the governor that the major wanted deciphered.

Murderous things begin to happen once the train resumes it journey; the first passenger to die on board is Dr. Molyneux (David Huddleston of "McQ"), and Deakin asks to examine the body. He discovers that Molyneux was murdered. Later, something even worse happens when the two coaches housing the troops and the caboose come uncoupled from the train. Before he dies with his men, Sergeant Bellew blasts his way out of the locked car with his revolver and is shocked to see the brakeman in the caboose dead with a knife in his back. The cars and caboose plummet into a gorge and disintegrate! Of course, we don't see any bodies tumble out. Eventually, we learn that not only John Deakin is no outlaw, but an undercover government agent, but also the epidemic is a conspiracy between a homicidal maniac Levi Calhoun and a renegade tribe of Native Americans lead by Paiute Chief White Hand (Eddie Little Sky of "The Professionals"). As it turns out, Deakin discovers that the medical supplies are in fact repeating rifles stolen from the factory along with crates of dynamite. "Will Penny" director Tom Gries, who had collaborated earlier with Bronson on modern-day escape opus "Breakout,' which Bronson played for laughs, where he flew a helicopter into a Mexican prison and rescue an American citizen, maintains a firm hand throughout this rugged horse opera that takes place primarily on the train. Predictably, the characters that you think are villainous in fact are not villains. Bill McKinney is an example. The train wreck is spectacular despite absence of dead bodies. Presumably, the filmmakers didn't resort to a score or more of dummies because it would have been either too gruesome or too phony. Incidentally, those railroad cars that plunge down the mountain side are real, not fake toy models. What is really strange is the decision to dub Robert Tessier. Presumably, the producers didn't like the twangy sound of Tessier's voice, so they hired perennial narrator Paul Frees with his deep voice to voice him. Not exactly one of Charles Bronson's most memorable westerns, but this sturdy, above-average, outdoor adventure boasts plenty of action.

Something's not right at isolated Fort Humbolt and diphtheria may be the least of the problems. Breakheart Pass is based on the adventure thriller by Alistair MacLean, who also wrote the screenplay. It's not bad as a Bronson vehicle except for its excesses: An obvious 1970s score glued on a movie that's set a century earlier; one action set piece after another, most a lot of fun but so many that the storyline becomes just the excuse for the set pieces; and corny directorial indulgences that have nearly every character in the movie exchanging suspicious glances with one another at key moments, accompanied by music stings.

What Breakheart Pass has going for it are some fine character actors like Ben Johnson, Charles Durning and David Huddleston; the look of the film...the hovel of the tiny rail town of Myrtle in the Rockies, dry, gray, worn-out plank buildings, a shack of a train station, a utilitarian brothel that's all business; the tired steam engine and worn carriages but with a plush interior of the wood-paneled dining car and parlor; the rugged snow-covered Sierra Nevada mountains; the stunt work directed by Yakima Canute in his last picture; and, of course, Charles Bronson, phlegmatic, stoic, always watching and seldom speaking. Bronson sure wasn't handsome but he had a memorable, worn and craggy face, even with that Fu Manchu moustache he often wore. He also had the screen presence of a basically tough good man who could do, when aroused, violence that would hurt. Few major movie stars were as unlikely as Bronson.

What's the fuss at Fort Humbolt? It has something to do with conspiracy, treachery, rifles and gold...the usual. All we know is that we're on board a train carrying medical supplies and provisions to aid the sick soldiers at the fort. Aboard is the territorial governor, the daughter of the fort's commander, a doctor, a minister, a train official, a major, some of his soldiers and a lawman with his prisoner, a man called Deakin (Charles Bronson). We don't really care, even when the passengers start being murdered. We learn those supplies seem to consist of rifles and ammunition and that Deakin is no bad guy, but this is predictable. All those great stunt set pieces just pile on and make the plot irrelevant. There are fights atop the moving train, the steam engine billows out huge white clouds of steam as it chugs and rattles across a high, rickety wooden bridge, men fall and bounce off that bridge, corpses are discovered in firewood piles, in rifle boxes and in train compartments, Indians rampage and attack, there's a cavalry charge across the snow, a runaway troop car crashes down a mountainside, you name it. Best of all, most of the movie takes place in and around that steam engine, clattering and swaying over the tracks through the mountains. Engine Number 9 should have received star billing alongside Bronson. Just about everyone on the train is suspicious and only Deakin is smart and tough enough to figure things out and then do something about it. With the stunts, with Bronson and with that steam engine, Breakheart Pass could make a great theme park ride.

That sentiment holds true of most of Alistair MacLean's books. He was an immensely successful writer of thrillers that featured the same formula: Workmanlike plots, lots of action, little or no sex (it got in the way of the action, MacLean thought) and indestructible heroes. He wrote about 30 thrillers. The last half were nothing but tired exercises in theme park rides. His reputation now probably rests on two movies made from his books, Where Eagles Dare and The Guns of Navarone. For those who enjoy well-written adventure thrillers by authors on their way to being forgotten, try some of the books by Desmond Bagley, James Leasor, Geoffrey Jenkins, and Victor Canning.