Review of Mackenna's Gold (1969) by Max M — 13 Aug 2010

The creative force behind one of the all-time great WWII action/adventure films, The Guns of Navarone, including writer Carl Foreman, director J. Lee Thompson, and star Gregory Peck, reunite for this western about a small group of bandits (led by Omar Sharif) who kidnap a Marshal (Peck) in order to lead them to a legendary valley full of Apache gold.

Basically, everything that worked so brilliantly in Navarone - a terrific story that moved along at a perfect pace, interesting characters and exciting and suspenseful action scenes - falls apart here.

With this picture, the story meanders along at a sluggish pace, every-so-often coming to a dead stop so more characters can be introduced (probably because the leads are so damn boring), then get killed off during the next generic action scene, and concludes with an absolutely ridiculous climax that is completely wrong for the film.

Other than an interesting score by Quincy Jones and some nice location photography, courtesy of the Super Panavision cameras, of the Utah desert, this picture really has nothing to offer, which is a shame considering the talent involved.