Boy, this is a mess. This is one of those films that, on paper, look like they have a lot going for them but, when they put it on the screen, nothing meshes. There's a decent cast Bronson, van Devere, Benzali, Ireland, Corey and an intriguing setting, but the plot is fatally anaemic and the direction, considering it comes from an old trooper like Thompson, is surprisingly shoddy. Much of the acting is second-rate at best, while characters perform abrupt about turns for no explicable reason. For instance, Orville Beecham (Charles Dierkop), a clean-living Mormon farmer, is crazy for revenge after mysterious intruders murder his wives and children and yet is full of forgiveness after the rest of his family is wiped out in a gunfight.
The film opens well, with an atmospheric prologue in which two mysterious gunmen massacre the wives and children, although why the gunmen's identities are concealed is something of a mystery as they disappear for the next thirty minutes and are immediately confirmed as the killers when they re-appear. Anyway, from this neatly paced opener, the film goes rapidly downhill. Charles Bronson plays a Denver reporter who gets involved with the warring Mormon clans who go to war over the killings, and he's pretty bad here. He was 67 when the film was made, and he looks bloated and tired. On top of that, he's saddled with an awful script and a frankly ludicrous storyline which is a crime really because the unusual subject matter here deserves much better writing than that offered by 73-year-old writer Paul Jarrico. Director J. Lee Thompson manages a couple of effective scenes, and there is a good sequence in which two water tankers attempt to crush Bronson's vehicle on a winding country road, but for the most part his direction is flat and uninspired and the story simply fails to engage.
Bottom line: give this one a miss.
