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Amazon.co.uk review
This restoration of Sam Peckinpah's 1965 western Major Dundee is nothing short of magnificent, a noble attempt at restoring a famously wrecked masterpiece. When Peckinpah went over budget and over schedule during the Mexico shoot, unshot scenes were cancelled and the footage rudely cut by the studio. The director disowned the results. In 2005, surviving footage was patched back in, and a new musical soundtrack commissioned to replace the score Peckinpah hated. This raises some legitimate questions about interpreting a director's intentions, and about messing with film history, but Major Dundee--The Extended Version is such a rousing, mysterious experience, one feels grateful.
Major Dundee (Charlton Heston) is a vainglorious officer busted to the decidedly inglorious job of overseeing prisoners in a fort in New Mexico. An abduction gives him the excuse to mount an expedition into Mexico, chasing the perpetrators and perhaps a shot at greatness. His ragtag posse includes Confederate POWs, notably one Captain Ben Tyreen (Richard Harris), whose intense former friendship with Dundee is tainted with a sense of betrayal on both sides. (Heston and Harris, two actors not known for subtlety, are splendid.) Part Ahab, part Alexander the Great, Dundee leads the expedition away from its purpose and into a near-mythic kind of wandering.
Peckinpah gets everything right--the landscapes, the sneaky humour, the code of men. He also takes time to distinguish the supporting characters, such as Jim Hutton's awkward young officer and Senta Berger's stranded widow. The Peckinpah stock company of amazing character actors is in place, too, including James Coburn, Warren Oates, Ben Johnson, L.Q. Jones, and Slim Pickens. It will never be exactly what Peckinpah envisioned, but now Major Dundee rides suspiciously close to greatness. --Robert Horton
Product description
Sam Peckinpah's first big-budget film was also the first to be taken away and released in a shortened version. But now 40 years later most of the missing footage has been located and reinserted with the entire soundtrack remixed in 5.1 Dolby Digital and a completely new score composed. The new scenes complete the electrifying depiction of an oppressive Union officer who leads a squad of Rebel prisoners ex-slaves and criminals into Mexico to hunt down a band of murdering Apaches which raises the question: who represents a greater threat?
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
10 of 11 people found the following review helpful
Format:DVD
In its restored form, Major Dundee is really neither better nor worse than it was before: but since it was always a pretty good and always interesting epic failure, that's not necessarily a bad thing. The structural flaws are still there, with the additions more filling in details than adding insight or filling holes, but its still an interesting take on flawed men trying to find some kind of personal vindication in an illegal incursion into a foreign country (Mexico at a time when it was flooded with French troops and renegade Apaches) while their own country is caught up in a bloody civil war of its own. Where most Civil War films opt for either tragedy or a sense of a nation healing itself, this picks at the scabs instead, offering inadequate men barely able to believe in their own delusions any more but still determined to follow them through to the bloody end. And this being Peckinpah, even in 1965, there is plenty of blood and grit on offer - it's a sweaty, dirty looking movie that's under no romantic illusions (well, aside from Richard Harris' tendency to overdo the eyeliner). Unlike The Wild Bunch, it's not a film that gets better every time you see it, but it's still pretty impressive.
The new score, the thing that worried me most about this restoration, is also quite impressive, for the most part pastiching a 60s score convincingly enough for it not to seem out of place. That said, there is something disappointing in the striving but unfulfilled main title: it matches the character perfectly (Dundee is constantly revealed as a very hollow man), but the lack of musical resolution is somewhat unsatisfying. Still, it's certainly less grating for most viewers than Daniel Amfitheatrof's original score or Mitch Miller and his Singalong Gang's jaunty can't-get-it-out-of-your-head-dammit title number, Fall in Behind the Major.
The new score, the thing that worried me most about this restoration, is also quite impressive, for the most part pastiching a 60s score convincingly enough for it not to seem out of place. That said, there is something disappointing in the striving but unfulfilled main title: it matches the character perfectly (Dundee is constantly revealed as a very hollow man), but the lack of musical resolution is somewhat unsatisfying. Still, it's certainly less grating for most viewers than Daniel Amfitheatrof's original score or Mitch Miller and his Singalong Gang's jaunty can't-get-it-out-of-your-head-dammit title number, Fall in Behind the Major.
7 of 8 people found the following review helpful
Format:DVD
The studio travesty has been reversed as far as is possible to reflect Sam Peckinpah's vision. The film is still flawed but this version with extended added scenes and a new soundtrack seems refreshingly new, after all these years. The only version to buy.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:DVD
More footage and a new soundtrack. It doesn't fill many of the holes in the original, so if you already own the old version you don't need to buy this version. If you haven't seen this movie and you want a taster of a Peckinpah movie, you should definitely buy this DVD. For a change, the extra features are actually decent.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Minor rehaul of a Major Dundee
This 'restored' version of Major Dundee is a sensitive creation of what this film should perhaps originally have been. Read more
Published 1 month ago by Josh
DVD
Bought as a gift. Easy to find on amazon despite it being an old film. Arrived quickly in the post.
Published 5 months ago by ramgib
Piece of cake?
The plot is reasonable but the character. as played by Heston, is not really convincing and lacks the intensity and commitment that I believe the role called for. Read more
Published on 6 Dec 2009 by E. Brooker
ANOTHER MAJOR PLAYER OF THE WESTERN GENRE.
this is a very good western with a great cast about a battalion of calvary troop sent after maruading indians who are on the rampage . Read more
Published on 18 Oct 2009 by BUBS.
One of Peckinpah's best
Of all the Peckinpah films I have seen, this is one of his best, Ranks among his other masterpieces (The Wild Bunch, Cross of Iron, among others)
Published on 24 Aug 2009 by Mr. O. C. R. Llewellyn
Good restoration
I have always enjoyed this film, mainly for the interaction between the two main stars. Now seeing this film resorted it does get better. Read more
Published on 29 Jun 2009 by "Smith" Reader
Great Movie -- 1965
An epic classic that could have been starring the cream of Hollywood. Major Dundee was hampered by studio tampering and conflicts that arose between Peckinpah and his movie... Read more
Published on 12 Aug 2008 by Billy Ray Cyrus
Major Dundee
I have a region 1 version of this film and it last 136 minutes. I have never tried to read between the lines on any film, it should be about enjoyment rather than how good the... Read more
Published on 8 Aug 2008 by C
Butchered by the Producers in 1965
An epic classic that could have been starring the cream of Hollywood. Major Dundee was hampered by studio tampering and conflicts that arose between Peckinpah and his movie... Read more
Published on 3 July 2008 by Billy Ray Cyrus
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