Flawed, Stritctly for Adults, But Worth Seeing

Rating: 8/10 (3 October 2007)

This is a splashy, color remake of a movie made in 1957 in black and white. There is much added material, much more blood and violence, lots more talking. An element of sadism along with occasional four letter profanity make this movie UNSUITABLE for viewers of tender age.
The production values are high, with full exploitation of fifty years of advances in movie-making. The gunfire sounds startlingly real. The roughness of frontier towns like Contention, Arizona is convincingly depicted--half the buildings are just tents, muddy streets, few women to be seen.
The director understood the importance of the role of Ben Wade's lieutenant--played in the original by the young and fair haired Richard Jaeckel. The casting was right on the money here, with this time the character's feminine element explicitly pointed out rather than implied. A big surprise was the gritty performance by Peter Fonda--unrecognizable but utterly believable as a tough-as-leather Pinkerton man and a long way from "Easy Rider". Just as that film launched a second career for Jack Nicholson, Fonda could benefit much from his work in this one.
Plausibility problems begin with the first scene: the holdup of an armored wagon. Five of the twenty men in Wade's gang are killed. Would you join an outfit with a loss rate of 25 percent? The other plot holes have been thoroughly exposed in earlier reviews. Amazing how ignorant these experienced lawmen are about prisoner transport! The last scene is both repulsive and ridiculous, truly an anticlimax.
An entertaining two hours all the same.