Good idea lost in the noise

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

Amazing worth wacthing. So good. Biased but well made with many good points.

The movie really just wants to entertain people.

Timothy Nolan((John Vernon) was lucky. He got to sit with unmarried Katy(Diane Moldaur) on the train, while the rest of the train robbers brandished hardware and dynamite in stopping the train and opening the mail car, to get at the strong box containing paper currency. The latter was stuffed into the empty suitcases of Nolan and Katy, who had no problem getting past security to their hotel room. They would soon marry, buy a mansion and make investments with nearly the whole of the loot Several years later, Nolan tries to steal a gold shipment from a Chinese mining consortium., but is thwarted. He needs a big loan or heist to avoid bankruptcy before his investments pay dividends. The commercial banks won't make the loan, so he keeps sounding out the Chinese for a loan. They aren't too keen on the idea.......Meanwhile, fellow train robber Harker Fleet(George Peppard) has been sent to prison, not for the train robbery, but for injuring the sheriff and deputy in his haste to exit a window when he heard that he was expected to marry a girl he had made pregnant. Fleet later discovered that the girl wasn't pregnant, although they had married that morning. She soon had the marriage annulled, as she didn't want to be married to a jailbird. Nolan had successfully deprived Fleet of his share of the loot, and had stolen his girl(Katy), who believed him married. Two and a half years later, Fleet was released, and moved to where Nolan and Katy were reported to be. Eventually, Nolan, Fleet, and Chang(head of the Chinese miners consortium) agreed on a complex plan to get the Chinese gold safely to San Francisco. Nolan was hoping to steal part of it. You may need to run this bye again to gain an understanding of the details. Anyway, there is a climactic shootout around the train and train station, the Chinese using dynamite in place of firearms, which they were unfamiliar with. It was Nolan and henchmen vs. Fleet, the Chinese, and Katy. Guess who ends up alive to claim Kate as his wife-to-be.......This is the only western I've encountered where Chinese gold miners are characterized as they usually were: in sizable groups. These offered them more protection from the depredations of mostly non-Chinese, which usually went unpunished, because California Chinese had virtually no civil rights, hence no protection by the judicial system. After 1852, there were thousands of Chinese gold miners, and by 1870, they constituted a third of the CA gold miners. They tended to mine what others considered less promising areas, and stay longer. Since they weren't allowed to become citizens, they were subject to the Foreign Miners Tax, which often robbed them of 50% of their profit. They were often subject to rapacious fake tax collectors......Sometimes described as a comedic western, the humor is mostly concentrated in one segment , where Fleet enters the bedroom of a sleeping prostitute to claim that he was with her all night, thus could not possibly be one of the train robbers. He had to deal with an idiosyncratic music box he accidentally activated that wouldn't stop playing. Fortunately, the prostitute was a sound sleeper..... See this entertaining film at YouTube.

The plot of this movie may seem familiar to Western devotees and so it should because it is essentially the same as that deployed by Brando in his sole directorial credit One Eyed Jacks ,namely an ex jailbird bent on revenge on a former associate ,now a man of wealth and substance ,who he feels has double crossed him .Where the movies part company is that Brando used the plot as the vehicle for a grim almost Jacobean revenge tragedy ,this movie takes a lighter ,friskier tone Peppard plays the wronged man ,one Harker Fleet ,who seeks to get back at his former associate in crime ,Timothy Nolan -well played by John Vernon.They are rivals for the favours of Diane Muldaur and also vie with each other in striving to rob an elderly Chinese man of his gold Andrew V McLaglen -who along with Burt Kennedy was virtually the only man directing Westerns on a regular basis in the USA during the seventies-keeps things moving briskly and the action is vigorous and well paced .Good performances and a tongue in cheek script help maintain interest and the result is a diverting second tier Western that many people will enjoy

George Peppard is excellent with outstanding support from John Vernon and Diana Muldaur. A great old-time western with twists and turns, humor, action and Victor McLaglen at his best. It is certainly his best western movie.I would love to be able to see this again. I'm sure it will come to DVD someday, but what's holding it up?I haven't seen in on television in years. Have people totally forgotten about this lost jewel?I've been watching for it to come available for years. I hope a number of others who have seen it bother to comment in the hope that it may affect the decision to release it.

It is astonishing to me that, in the world of the modern Western, no one studio has been willing to give this movie a release on home video or DVD. Astonishing, and disappointing, for it truly is a jewel, and features some fine action sequences and performances.In the film, George Peppard plays Harker Fleet, a dashing blonde haired Cowboy who was apparently served a stint in prison while his former comrade Timothy Nolan (played by John Vernon) got away both with their last big score, along with his woman (played by Diana Muldaur). Upon his release, Harker is determined to even the score, and sets about his task by aiding a local Chinese commune that is being preyed upon by Nolan and his henchmen.One fantastic action sequences has Harker slipping out to a barn, knocking out a handsome henchman, tying him up, and using the same rope to pull himself up so that he can listen in to a meeting between Nolan and his associates. Another has Harker knocking around Nolan's chief henchman Jim Gant at a party, while the Chinese infiltrate Nolan's compound and recover a prisoner who was being held for ransom.This was what classic Westerns were all about- men dealing with the bad guys not only with their guns, but also with their brains, and at times, with their fists. It is this intermingling of Harker's brains, braun, and skill with a six-shooter that makes this a very worthwhile film.Notwithstanding what I felt was a very sloppy and annoying performance by Diana Muldaur (in the film she seems so obnoxious and stodgy that you expect she was in part responsible for betraying Harker in the first place), this is a fantastic film, and I give it very high praise!