I wanted to like it more than I actually did... But much of the humor totally escaped me and I walked out only mildly impressed.

The plot isn't so bad, but the pace of storytelling is too slow which makes people bored. Certain moments are so obvious and unnecessary for the main plot. I would've fast-forwarded those moments if it was an online streaming. The ending looks like implying a sequel, not sure if this movie will get one

It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Major Dundee is Sam Peckinpah's first big studio film that has a lot of problems and one of its biggest ones is that it was cut by the studio. I have only seen the extended remastered edition, which is the closest thing available to Sam's original cut of the film. I did feel that after the first half of the film, it has parts that don't make much sense and parts that tend to drag on a bit. However, the cast is great and has a lot of Peckinpah regulars like Ben Johnson, Warren Oates(who would reunite next in Sam's masterpiece The Wild Bunch), James Coburn, LQ Jones, RG Armstrong, Slim Pickens, as well as Richard Harris,who was awesome as nemesis for leading man/antihero Charlton Heston, who gives one of his most interesting performances in this picture. While the film relies heavily on conventional elements of the genre, it also is ahead of its time as well. Peckinpah's west is much grittier and violent than previous masters of the genre like John Ford. The characterization is excellent and the characters are layered and complex and come across very authentic. The film falls short of being great, which Sam learned from this picture to make his untouchable masterpiece The Wild Bunch. However, this movie is far from bad and has brilliant dialogue and memorable performances.

Note this is a review of the film as originally released-ie in the version approximately 2 hours long. I haven't seem the longer later versions. However this supposedly inferior version packs quite a punch. Its outstanding qualities for me were firstly a towering performance by Charlton Heston as the eponymous ant-hero. A man who is obsessed with his career as a soldier and is very good at fighting battles. However, apart from his fighting prowess the film progressively reveals him to be an adequate individual in many respects. Heston is excellent at conveying all these features and the character's internal conflicts.Heston "carries this picture but the rest of the cast is usually very good.. I found the persistent superciliousness and airs and graces of Tyreen rather irritating. I think this is mostly due to the screenplay but I think Richard Harris overdid things occasionally.The other noteworthy feature was some truly powerful and exciting (but brutal) battle scenes, particularly those involving cavalry. There are many other scenes involving horses which are usually excellently choreographed-in this respect I feel the film shows the influence of John Ford.The film is interesting also in that is quite complex.-In the sense that there are many different areas of conflict both external and internal. Major Dundee has many enemies of different kinds in the film but it could be said that he is his own worst enemy.I don't think I will dwell too much on the undoubted negatives too much as these have been endlessly dissected already. However the music is not a plus. it is too upbeat and in this sense I feel undermines what the film is saying about the brutality of war.The film is also occasionally incoherent, with some loose ends (eg what happens to "Linda"?). In places it has been brutally and incompetently edited.But for all its defects I have to say that I enjoyed it very much. Well worth watching.

I had some hope of finding something to enjoy about this movie, given the star studded cast, but I came away disappointed. Heston's embittered Major was adequate enough, but Richard Harris, the British Actor was completely over the top, hamming it up as the dissident Confederate captive. He must have been included as a sop to the then current "British invasion",that, along with the Beatles, included Lawrence Harvey, Richard Burton, Michael Caine, et al. In any event, he brought "Scene stealing" to a new low.The weak background plot, which has to do with searching out marauding Apaches, is nothing more than a set up for the real showdown between the two protagonists, Heston and Harris.The attempts to give the story grit and realism, was overdone. The one-armed scout, played by James Coburn had me constantly scrutinizing his outfit to figure out how they hid his arm, and the completely gratuitous and stereotypical racial scene between the southern soldier and Brock Peters was farcial, as was the way this same supposedly tough, battle hardened soldier was sent yelping by the old preacher.It might have appeared "edgy" in the 60s, but when soldiers are surrounded by the enemy and in imminent danger of being wiped out, race and background become secondary issues.I didn't stay around for the ending, as I really didn't care what happened to the characters.A John Ford western it was not.

PLOT: Major Amos Charles Dundee (Charlton Heston) is an arrogant, ego-driven Union soldier forced into the role of prison warden as punishment for "trying to fight his own war" at Gettysburg. Unable to see the error of his ways, Dundee spends every waking minute of the day in utter resentment of his assignment when what he truly wants is to be out there making war on what's left of the Confederates in the closing days of the Civil War. Desiring action, Dundee gets his wish when a group of Apache start terrorizing the countryside and kidnap three boys. Seeing a chance for glory and even a promotion, maybe even redemption or at least recognition of his skills as a soldier, Dundee organizes a ragtag group of misfits into a regiment to hunt down the Apache, rescue the boys and then destroy the offenders. The misfits include whatever drunks and cattle rustlers happen by (such as Slim Pickens), one priest (R.G. Armstrong, who offers the memorable line: "He who destroy my flock I shall destroy."), an absent minded Artillery officer (Jim Hutton), a handful of black soldiers (led by Brock Peters), one armed scout Sam Potts (James Coburn), and a group of Confedreate prisoners (consisted of many familiar Peckinpah faces, such as Warren Oates), led by the Irish immigrant Captain Benjmain Tyreen (Richard Harris). Tyreen & Dundee were once friends before Dundee voted against him over a duel, ending Tyreen's career as a Union soldier. Dundee & his troops have the good fortune of getting the boys back almost by accident, but Dundee refuses to give up his search, and even goes so far as to run afoul of a group of French Lancers in occupied Mexico to achieve his goals. But Dundee is not the great heroic leader of men he likes to think he is, and experiences a full on nervous breakdown when a moment of carelessness with the lovely Senta Berger nearly gets him killed. It is Tyreen, his former friend turned enemy, who rouses him out of his drunken stupor, if only to spite him, setting the stage for the final conflicts with both the Apache and the French.The shooting of "Major Dundee" was said to be very, very bad. As Heston recalled in his autobiography "In the Arena" and countless interviews over the years, filming began without a finished script or an agreed upon vision of the film: Heston saw it as a film about life after the Civil War, the studio just wanted a standard issue cavalry vs. Indians film like the kind John Ford used to make (Ford was even pitched the film but he passed as he was busy with another project and wasn't really interested), while Sam Peckinpah apparently saw it as being "The Wild Bunch", or something like it. Then there was Peckinpah himself, whose genius was matched only by his erratic behavior, which did not endear him to the studio, who in turn punished him as the Union punished the Dundee character. In his book Heston compared Peckinpah to another maverick filmmaker whom Heston had worked with, Orson Welles: "Where Orson would charm the cast and crew, Sam would pick fights with the cast and fire the crew." At one point while trying to get a "Magic Hour" shot (blood red sunset) of Dundee leading the troops over a hill, Peckinpah's penchant for abusing and mistreating his actors finally pushed the normally laid back Heston too far and Heston chased after him on horseback trying to run him down, saber drawn; Peckinpah avoided injury by jumping into a boom operator's chair & get lifted 30 feet into the air just in time. Despite Peckinpah's unruly behavior (legend has it that part of the film was directed by Heston himself when Peckinpah disappeared in a drunken haze) Heston still fought to keep him on the project, even offered to return his paycheck if the studio would give Sam more time to shoot crucial scenes, but the studio stabbed Heston in the back by taking his money and then scrapped the shooting of those scenes anyway. Additionally, there were said to be problems with Richard Harris, a fine actor but one whose reputation for behaving badly was as well known as Peckinpah's. According to Senta Berger, Harris became "a wiser man later in life" but at the time he clashed with just about everyone around him because he saw co-stars as rivals, and in particular he saw Heston as his primary rival, so much so that Harris would jack up his own boots just he wouldn't appear shorter than Heston on screen (which of course he was). Heston himself didn't look favorably on Harris's behavior, and joked in his autobiography that the real problem was that Harris was Irish while Heston himself was of Scottish/English descent.The original score wasn't a particularly good fit for Peckinpah's tragic vision either.Despite it all - and my review is based on the longer version released on DVD in 2005 complete with a new score - "Major Dundee" is still a fascinating examination of two anti-heroes and their war of egos set against a sad, crumbling world full of pretentious hypocrites and impossible ideals. Heston and Harris are well cast and well matched as the stubborn, rigid Dundee and the flamboyant, surprisingly insightful Tyreen, and they are surrounded by a familiar cast of character actors doing the best they can with incomplete roles. We'll never know what the film could have been in some other, fairer life, but it's still worth a look for fans of westerns, the stars and the director.