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Good movie but grossly overrated

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

Revenge guessing game between escaped chain gang convict, James Coburn, and unretired sheriff, Charleton Heston. Coburn, along with a nice assortment of seedy characters, kidnaps Heston's daughter, Barbara Hershey, as bait. A prolonged pursuit leads to some unpleasantness, including gang rape. Michael Parks disappears after the first half hour, but the story moves right along, climaxing with a violent and not totally expected conclusion. When hate is the only thing you have to live for, killing your prey can be a rather empty experience. Technically there is a definite problem with under lit night scenes, and the score is very forgettable, however the the film delivers a brutal and exciting story. Recommended. - MERK

I have to side with the naysayers here, if you've seen enough Westerns, there's no escaping the fact that this one is nothing special. Perhaps notable for an early treatment of rape in cinema, even that theme gets botched by the overtly one track randiness of henchman Gant (John Quade). Once the attempt is made though, you have to wonder why Barbara Hershey's character doesn't seem the least bit traumatized, never mind the non response of her fiancée Brickman (Christopher Mitchum).This could have been a taut psychological Western, what with the setup of the characters portrayed by Charlton Heston and James Coburn. Ultimately though, they seem to rather routinely go through their motions, former lawman Burgade (Heston) somewhat convincing as he reads Provo (Coburn) like a book, but as it turns out, Provo never even tries to throw him a curve. Say, how is it Burgade at one point has trouble getting up on his horse, but then winds up taking four bullets from Provo at point blank range and a nasty hard a-- bump off a rock ledge, and still manage to survive? I'd give him till the closing credits finish rolling.At one point, as the hunt proceeds through Indian reservation territory, Heston's character remarks to his daughter's fiancée - "Everybody's gotta die, nobody's gotta give up". Sorry to say however, the film does both.

TLHM is a gritty turn-of-the-century western pitting aging lawman Chuck Heston against escaped con James Coburn, who has kidnapped Heston's luscious daughter (the ever fetching Barbara Hershey). The shootouts and death scenes are almost G-rated by today's standards, but you can tell they were trying. Also, by 1976, there had been a lot more violent and bloody flicks, like THE WILD BUNCH and SOLDIER BLUE. So we must make do with the characters, and Heston and Coburn prove why they don't make them like this any longer. If this were remade, you might cast Mel Gibson or Tommy Lee Jones as the worn out cop and Stuart Wilson or Gary Busey as the obsessive bad buy, but it just wouldn't be the same. Heston and Coburn were legends. There are no legends today. Worth a look.

This movie's not so bad, but I went into it with really low expectations. Yes, it's violent...no big deal. The movie's flaws are many, but it's heart is in the right place in trying to play around with the concept of a traditional western. Only problem with this is that by the mid 70s when it was made, everybody was doing the same thing, with better results I might add. What I mean by that is the script and story just copy some of the innovations of other new-style westerns -- the casual violence, the moral ambiguity, etc. -- but doesn't seem to really appreciate the full import of what it's doing in terms of the narrative and the characters. So what you get is the packaging of a new-style western draped across the same old saccharine BS that westerns typically have; hence the ending, when 'hero' and 'villain' shoot each other, the villain dies, and then the hero's daughter and fiancé attend to the hero's wounds...fade and cut. So it goes. All in all, better than I would have thought, but far from good.