The penultimate film of director Joseph L. Mankiewicz (All About Eve) is a tart-tongued Western written by the same gents who had penned Bonnie and Clyde three years earlier.

Technically, the film is near perfect, reminding us how good a Hollywood programmer can be, even at an inflated cost of seven million dollars.

If smart callousness, moral indifference and violence on the rockpile are what you are looking for, at least this ex- ample is rather conspicuously well acted.

Fails to deliver on a promising story.