"Money. Is that worth risking your life for?" a Juarista general asks Ben Trane...played by Gary Cooper ...
"Comes closer than anything I know." says he.
Robert Aldrich's second feature film ...set during the Mexican revolution of 1866, filmed on location ...featuring a number of now familiar faces: Ernest Borgnine ; a young Charles Bronson (who hadn't even changed his name to Bronson yet); Jack Elam...., packed with intrigue, double crosses, triple crosses.....backstabbing..shaky & shifting alliances........is a lot of fun....shot in SuperScope featuring the great Ernest Lazlo's cinematography. In many ways...a transitional film (from a 40's style --> the 50's style)..& a transitional Western, one that signals a change from old-style epic Hollywood Westerns...; it actually combines the large Hollywood spectacle with the grittier, more cynical Westerns of the 50's & 60's... and anticipates & influences the Spaghetti Western ...& the "Mexican Revolution" theme or subplot.
Cooper plays a loner named Benjamin Trane. He rides into Mexico hoping to sign up with either Emperor Maximilian or the revolutionary Juarez--whoever will pay him the most. He stumbles across Joe Erin (Lancaster)..their first encounter is a hoot & gets this movie off on a rousing note.. ...& hooks up with a group of mercenaries headed by Erin.... However, their negotiations with Marquis Henri de Labordere (played to the hilt by Cesar Romero) are interrupted by the arrival of the Juaristas. From then on...The story becomes a matter of who's conning whom..... a fortune in gold ...& what seems like EVERYBODY's playing EVERYBODY....& a terrific conclusion.
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