Good start, but then it gets ruined

I am only giving this movie a 1 for the great cast, though I can't imagine what any of them were thinking. This movie was horrible

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

It's not a bad Western, as far as that goes, but it's hard to imagine why some people feel it's the best Western ever made.Half a dozen or so diverse character enter into a brutal week-long horse race across the Southwestern desert, encountering numerous tribulations and conflicts along the way. Is that original? Well, in a way I suppose it is. Here we have six horses. In "Sahara", Humphrey Bogart and his companions only had one tank between them.The musical score borrows from Aaron Copeland and Maurice Jarre's "Lawrence of Arabia," and indeed the scenery is exquisite, even if not as dramatically handled as in "Lawrence." (It was partly shot in White Sands National Monument in New Mexico.) Except for one or two effective slow-motion scenes of horses being ridden half to death -- or all the way -- Richard Brooks' direction is competent without being notable.The plot. It's as if a committee had sat around a table drinking café lattes mit Schlag and made a lot of notes about what can happen to people who are riding horses through a colorful but forbidding Western landscape.Let's see. A man can be bitten by a rattlesnake, or almost. In this instance they killed the rattlesnake on screen, for real, which is terrible treatment for a handsome reptile who wants only to be left alone. (I'll bet the wranglers kissed the horses' rumps.) A man can get shot in the back by an escaping prison gang. A woman can be almost raped by a duo of greasy no-goodniks who just happen to be hanging around in the middle of nowhere as she rides past. Of course, if the woman is Candice Bergen, it's understandable that they should notice her presence, but is it really necessary for them to try to do more than simply squeeze and bite her, as any normal man would do? Then there is Jan Michael Vincent as the hot-dog fanfaron strutting around and challenging strangers to draw on him, "trying to earn a reputation," a convention of only the earliest TV Westerns.An old man can die of a heart attack from all the stress, and Ben Johnson gets to give a great speech about how important it is to be SOMEBODY and have people shake your hand. Johnson at least is given his due in one long take in which he directly addresses the camera. The guy is an icon.Another extended monologue is given to Gene Hackman, a former Rough Rider, describing the way good old Teddy Roosevelt led the charge up San Juan Hill. (Kids: This is the Spanish-American war we're discussing here, 1898.) But he gets the destination wrong. It was Kettle Hill, not San Juan Hill.Let me think of some other things that can go wrong during the race. A man can be poisoned by villains or by mistake, and, man, is this a mistake. After Gene Hackman imbibes some whiskey he takes a couple of gulps of laudanum, an opium compound, clutches his belly in agony and ululates his pain like a wounded animal. In reality, such a cocktail would put you into a soft, furry, tangerine-colored sleep in two minutes.Oh. And can an upper-class British twit have his beloved horse break a leg and can he be force to commit a merciful equicide, even while drowning in his own tears? You bet.

Sensational Western excellently acted , marvelously photographed and well screen-written with fine eye by Richard Brooks . It deals with some aging riders as Hackman , Coburn and Ben Johnson who get chance redeem themselves along with a young gunslinger , a Brit lord , a Mexican and an ex-whore . The film was based on a real , endurance race at the turn of the century ; it was inspired by the 1908 , 700-mile cross-country horse race from Evanston , Wyoming to Denver , Colorado. It was sponsored by the Denver Post , which offered $2,500 prize money to the winner . At the beginning of the 20th century, a newspaper organizes a grueling horse race : 700 miles to run in a few days . A bunch of ex-rough riders and a gunfighter enter a horse race in the desert . The motley group of disparate adventurers are competing , among them a woman , ex-prostitute (Candice Bergen) , Miss Jones, a Mexican , an Englishman (Ian Bannen) , a young gunslinger (Jan-Michael Vincent) , an old one (Ben Johnson) and two friends , Sam Clayton (Gene Hackman , though Charles Bronson turned down the leading role) and Luke Matthews (James Coburn) . All those individualists learn to respect for each other and develop a grudging and growing friendship . An overlong and dangerous horse race is the subject of this stunning and grand adventure , an epic in every sense of word . Impressive and breathtaking ending with the finalists terminating the grueling race . Exciting , funny and well acted , especially by Gene Hackman and James Coburn as two tough , two-fisted riders . Special mention to Ben Johnson as a veteran rider in his last feat . Colorfully photographed in Technicolor and Panavison by Harry Stradling Jr in Valley of Fire State Park and its Coyote Pass and Deah Valley (Nevada), Chama, New Mexico , Lake Mead, Taos , Nevada, White Sands National Monument, Alamogordo, New Mexico . Exceptional and thrilling soundtrack by Alex North (Cleopatra, Spartacus) , now a classic score .Directed and screen-played with magnificent style by Richard Brooks . He was a fine writer/director so consistently mixed the good and average which it became impossible to know that to expect from him next . Firstly he worked regularly as a Hollywood screenwriter . After that , his initial experience of directing was one of his own screenplays called ¨Crisis¨. The Richard Brooks films that have the greatest impact are realized during the 50s and 60s as ¨Cat on a hot tin roof¨, ¨Something of value¨ , ¨Elmer Gantry¨, ¨Sweet bird of youth¨, ¨In cold blood¨ , ¨Lord Jim¨. Brooks was a writer and director of Chekhovian depth , who mastered the use of understatement, anticlimax and implied emotion . His films enjoyed lasting appeal and tended to be more serious than the usual mainstream productions . Richards formerly directed another good Western titled ¨The professionals ¨ also with various tough stars as Burt Lancaster , Lee Marvin , Jack Palance and Robert Ryan , including the same musician , Alex North , and similar outdoors . The ¨Bite the bullet¨ is an authentic must see , not to be missed for buffs of the genre . A magnificent movie , hardly noticed for its theatrical release ; however , being nowadays very well considered . Rating : Above average because of its awesome acting , dialog , score are world class.

This is a fun Western with some great dialog that manages to be realistic about the Wild West without wallowing in severity and hardship.Bite The Bullet is about a 700 mile horse race across the harsh terrain of the West. A newspaper publisher has put up 2 thousand dollars to the winner to drum up readers for his publication, attracting a colorful field of competitors. There's Sam Clayton (Gene Hackman), a cowboy who cares as much about horses as he does people; Luke Matthews (James Coburn) is Sam's old friend and a gambling, whoring scoundrel looking to parlay winning the race into even more money; Miss Jones (Candace Bergen) is a former prostitute with her own reasons for entering the race; Carbo (Jan-Michael Vincent) is a kid who thinks he's a man until he learns what real manhood is during the cruelest days of the race; There's also a Brit just looking for a challenge, a Mexican with a bad tooth hoping to win for his family, an old cowhand who wants to be famous before he dies as well as a few more, including the newspaper publisher's picked man on an Arabian stallion.Each day the riders are given a new map that shows the safest, but not necessarily the quickest, route to the next checkpoint. While there's an awful lot of riding, this story isn't about race strategy. It is about the problems the riders encounter on the trail and the ones they bring with them, including secret plots, foolish decisions, accidents, bad luck and bad men.The best thing about Bite The Bullet is a lot of very fine dialog, both serious and humorous. Just about every character gets at least a couple of lines you'll remember after the film is over. And though memorable, the dialog almost never seems contrived or forced. These seem like real people who just managed to say the things you always wished you had said after the moment had passed.This movie also straddles the line between the artificial "everything is clean and wonderful" world of the Westerns of the 1950s and the overwrought "everything is crap" world of the modern Western like Unforgiven. The Wild West was a very rough place where life could be very hard, unpleasant and short. As Westerns have tried to more accurately represent that reality, a new cliché has been created. Instead of the West being the land of the singing cowboy, it's become a dystopic hellhole where no one in their right mind would ever want to live. Bite The Bullet threads the needle between those two extremes. It doesn't shy away from the difficulties and obstacles of living in a land where civilization is little more than a rumor, but it also doesn't ignore the fact that the West was a frontier where a man (and sometimes even a woman) could live his own life on his own terms in his own way. The Wild West was a bit like warfare. It was terrible and glorious and sometimes both at the same time.This is something of a sprawling story and it's not as tightly assembled as a lot of contemporary filmmaking. And after a pretty anticlimactic showdown, the movie turns maudlin right before it abruptly fades to black. It tries really hard to make a point about male-female relationships but never quite makes sense. This movie also contains a lot of bad stuff being done to horses. Some of it is just movie fakery, but some of it you wouldn't be allowed to do to a horse in a film today.Aside from a few uncomfortable moments when you wonder if something bad really did just happen to a horse, when you've got a good script along with Gene Hackman and James Coburn…it's hard for any movie to go wrong.

Gritty, dusty western from director Richard Brooks, who seems thoroughly engrossed in the genre while keeping all the usual clichés intact. Early 1900s horse race attracts a low-keyed cowboy (Gene Hackman), a suave gambler (James Coburn), a cocky kid (Jan Michael Vincent), and even a FEMALE (a surprisingly game Candice Bergen). Once the preliminaries are out of the way (with the predictable arguments over whether or not a woman should take part), this becomes a fairly engrossing entry, though one which breaks no new ground (it instead resembles something from Gary Cooper's era). Good-looking, if overlong piece has macho verve and a fine cast, yet the mechanisms of the plot get tiresome rather quickly. ** from ****