Movies
Breakheart Pass
The familiar Alistair MacLean strategy (lie, cheat, and conceal as long as possible, and finally deliver the revelations in staggering flurries) is put to work in a Wild West setting. The sense of exasperated mystification --- what the hell's happening here? -- is nicely set up in the briskly edited beginning, as various suspicious characters converge from every which way and thicken the plot straightaway. Thereafter, the pace is set by a troop train speeding through the middle of nowhere on a top-secret mission, and it hardly ever pauses, even when half the train and all the soldiers are wiped out in a dusty slow-motion wreck, a slight setback. MacLean ought to have been advised to let somebody else do the dialogue for his story; but Charles Bronson's poker face in the principal role could not be topped. With Ed Lauter, Ben Johnson, Richard Crenna, and Jill Ireland; directed by Tom Gries. 1976.
Reader Rating:
MPAA Rating: PG