Reviews

Accurately reviewed elsewhere, especially on Rotten Tomatoes, I want to draw attention to the two producers who leave MacLean fans with a reasonable legacy, in spite of the efforts of a few other hapless production companies who almost single-handedly jeopardised the MacLean brand forever with a handful of awful translations of his novels to screen. So here, the mixture of action thriller, western and 'murder' mystery is neatly propelled by assured performances from Gershwin and Kastner's assembled cast and once again decent money is invested in the production not least in the expensively-rented heritage train shot on location against a beautiful Idaho winter mountain backdrop to ground the otherwise lightweight plot in period naturalism. 'Breakheart Pass' certainly offers an unusual spin on the classic Hollywood Western genre. This was the final of Jerry Gershwin and Eliot Kastner's MacLean adaptations, and though they never repeated the legendary success of their first collaboration, 'Where Eagles Dare' they did screen justice to four of MacLean's classic plot-twisty thrillers adding 'When Eight Bells Toll' and 'Fear Is The Key' to this one, putting together strong creative teams with a relevant skillset, in this case the tried and tested Western-genre Director, Tom Gries ('Will Penny', '100 Rifles'). Unlike the Geoffrey Reeve camp who, having been rescued by Don Sharp's additional scenes including the famous boat chase in the undeniably, though one feels inadvertently watchable 'Puppet On A Chain', then hopelessly exposed the brand becoming successful only in ruining the potential of both 'Caravan To Vaccares' and 'The Way to Dusty Death'. It's worth avoiding Richard Harris's later vanity-project 'Golden Rendezvous' at all costs. 'Breakheart Pass' meanwhile maintains something that did remain pretty consistent throughout all of the MacLean adaptations: a robust and memorable musical score. On this occasion Jerry Goldsmith's second MacLean project following his innovative and exciting score for 'The Satan Bug' a decade earlier. MacLean fans should be grateful to Gershwin and Kastner for maintaining the fine precedent set by Carl Foreman when 'The Guns of Navarone' hit the screens in 1961 and later Martin Ransohoff's 'Ice Station Zebra' which consolidated the MacLean brand as a reliable name in muscular thrillers. Meanwhile, trivia hunters may be interested to note that 'Ice Station Zebra' Producer, Ransohoff introduced Charles Manson murder victim Sharon Tate to Hollywood whose demise was depicted in 'Hekter Skelter' a couple of years after 'Breakheart Pass' by Director, Tom Gries. A plot twist that even MacLean may never have thought up.

I'm an Alistair MacLean fan and knowledgeable about all the film adaptations, many of which are a genuine guilty pleasure for a worldwide audience. However it is impossible to find any merit in this film. Every aspect of this Richard Harris vanity project-cum-producers-now-notorious-criminal-money-laundering-scheme of a film is dismal. The script and screenplay standard are that of a high school play. Beyond awful, given the expectations of an international cinema audience and the reputation of the MacLean thriller brand. The acting is abysmal, the editing decisions bring new depths of incoherence to an already incoherent treatment and the modest, South African anti-apartheid documentary film-maker Ashley Lazarus is clearly so far out of his depth in the world of film-making that it's hard even to believe that the producers were ever serious about allowing him to deliver a film at all. Given that the whole thing was bossed by its lead, it's likely that Lazarus didn't even have a say. Sometimes films can be so charmingly bad that you can take a day off from your entertainment expectations and actually enjoy watching the carnage of a team having an off-day. This film however seems to despise its audience with the ineptitude of its execution. It really doesn't care about you. It looks bad. It sounds bad: the Jeff Wayne - War of the Worlds composer - soundtrack and its two variations on a theme - the opening title and the comic humming-ticking-sequencer-synth bomb motif, can't have had sight of any film footage, randomly dropped in as it is. And the film leaves you feeling bad. People joke about annoying moments in life when 'you'll never get those two hours back'. Watch this and you won't. But in this case, you'll also really resent it.

The existing reviews for this are useful and I'd agree with pretty much everything that people are saying. As someone who finds Alistair MacLean books and films a guilty pleasure, the decision to film on location and work in a little-documented actual festival gives the film a certain atmospheric appeal. However the subsequent commitment to using this footage appeared to hamper the creative team's ability to tell a coherent story. The frequent use of cutaways and montage such as the bullfight with the killing of De Croyter's daughter, suggests that the availability of the documentary footage drove the film's structure and so effectively killed opportunities to create suspense with more carefully constructed shots. Perhaps more unfortunate is that the Director constructing the shots was the hapless Geoffrey Reeve who managed to increasingly mess up three MacLeans. In addition to Vaccares, he directed the flawed, though undoubtedly watchable, 'Puppet On A Chain', noting however that the memorable boat chase was shot by Don Sharp. Then after 'Vaccares' he helmed the appalling 'The Way to Dusty Death' which confirmed that he was totally out of his depth as a Director in the industry. Writer, Paul Wheeler should also carry some responsibility for the eventual cinematic carnage. Maybe Reeve's TV work was better but he and the writer really didn't haven't a clue how to build suspense and handle this sort of material and as a result, a decade of exciting Alistair MacLean branded entertainments started to lose credibility with audiences. Starting here.