A not very good Clint Eastwood Western despite co-starring Robert Duvall, being written by Elmore Leonard and directed by John Sturges; Sturges was very much in decline during this stage of his career and from all accounts Leonard's script was tampered with.
It actually has a decent idea - the courtroom in a small town is taken over temporarily by a Mexican revolutionary/freedom fighter/terrorist, and a land baron recruits a gun slinger (guess who) to go catch him. But having set that up, the movie decides not to do anything that interesting with it - it just becomes Clint tagging along with a posse, acting very passively, before realising that the land baron (well played by Duvall) is a bad egg and changing sides... only not really because the freedom fighter (Saxon) is selfish and ruthless.
It's a muddy movie - Clint Eastwood's character is meant to be an ex gunslinger turned rancher or something who goes after Saxon in part because Saxon attacked his farm - but we never get the sense he's a farmer. And we never really see why Eastwood changes sides - not that he really changes sides either because he turns against the land baron more than becoming pro revolutionary. (Was Clint afraid to be too left wing on film?) In the end Saxon allows himself to be arrested and turned in for trial.
There are some pretty location shots of the mountains and there is some okay action towards the end with a siege at Church and later with a train crashing into a bar. But it's too confusing, and a bit gutless. And too often it's done in crappy early 70s Universal Pictures style i.e. too much like a TV show.
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