User reviews

This Willie Nelson film has a promising premise and Willie has great chemistry with the western veteran Jack Elam. However, the movie is lacking in the right combination of script,directing and casting that mark Willie's other movie outings. It never pulls the viewer in ...

Willie is his usual self-effacing cowpoke out to capture the loot.Jack Elam is the cantankerous curmudgeon he was born to play .

Any film with Willie and Elam cant be all that bad, but nothing memorable stands out here . Texas Guns & Red-Headed Stranger set a high standard for these type of movies...... This one will probably be enjoyed by Willie fans only.

I like Westerns featuring trains and I like Jack Elam, but WTHTG became something of a drag, with rather too many views of the train meandering along windy tracks, albeit through very scenic country.

The last twenty minutes or so were a bit of a mess. Given that earlier on the soldiers had to replenish the locomotive's water using a bath and trekking backwards and forwards to the river, it was a little surprising that the locomotive later passed a water tower, when it surely must have needed another top up.

Though the Mexican lieutenant's loyalties were mixed, why did he and his men agree to all the vital dynamite being handed over to the rebels in exchange for five Texas Rangers who shouldn't have been in Mexico?

Wasn't 1895 a little late for the Apaches to be so aggressive? And despite fierce exchanges of fire, including from a small cannon (that was very quickly re-loaded) no human and no horse appeared to have been killed - perhaps because the film was light-hearted, though not the comedy some people have described it as.

Although a few of the particularities that distinguish successful director Burt Kennedy's slow paced Westerns are to be found here in this film made for television, they yet are beneath a standard he has established in his most successful works, with a result that the piece is barely tolerable, generating very little of interest that might keep a viewer's attention focused upon the narrative. One will be expected to believe that a plot depicting two American adventurers journeying through the heart of civil strife torn 1895 Mexico in a train bearing a large load of dynamite, all the while attempting to evade unfriendly actions of Federale troops, anti-Porfirio Diaz rebels, hostile Apache Indians, and persistent Wells Fargo agents, might promise a great deal of action and suspense, but such fail to develop due to a weakly constructed script. The American pair, Cross (Willie Nelson) and Boone (Jack Elam), are on the lam from the U.S., having stolen a substantial supply of gold that Cross has secreted, and after they are captured by Mexican police, they are saved from death before a firing squad because of a promise they make to lead their captors to their cache of loot. On the way to the treasure, the entourage adds on a stranded rail car outfitted to house five prostitutes, and their procuress, played by Delta Burke, the women soon becoming an added but welcome burden to the bandit team during the essentially schematic episodes that follow. Direction from Kennedy, who as well produces and scripts here, is flabby throughout and the poorly composed screenplay, that includes a surfeit of anachronisms, misses on all cylinders, while Nelson is wooden and attacks his lines, thereby preventing character development. Elam receives the greatest amount of screen time, as a crusty old bandit. Burke's madam, in addition to her charges, are always perfectly coiffed, made up, and dressed, and it is a secure presumption that the Old West never saw such bewitching scarlet women, that additionally possess a remarkable talent for remaining clean and well-groomed, an ability shared, albeit to a lesser extent, by low-grade thieves Cross and Boone. The film apparently is meant to provide comic elements, but there is precious little comedic about the affair, with an unintended exception of a curiously superfluous number of scenes featuring rolling stock, quite as if the film's production team is attempting to establish a milestone figure for the greatest amount of footage involving moving trains, primarily shot in scenic regions of New Mexico and Colorado, to an extent that is more risible than pertinent to the storyline, especially when segments are edited as repeats. Acting laurels are shared here by Gerald McRaney as leader of the pursuing Wells Fargo riders, and Alfonso Arau as boss of the anti-government fighters, each actor managing to utilize fine technique in spite of being given sub-standard dialogue.

Looking at the previous reviews for this movie, I figured I'd be disappointed. I was pleasantly surprised. There's a good mix of action and comedy throughout the movie, Elam and Nelson make a good team, and Delta Burke looks and acts as well as I've ever seen her. Willie's acting is a bit wooden, but I find that it usually is. For a made for TV movie, it's really well done.

I love this movie. It might not be the best of Willie Nelson, Jack Elam, Delta Burke - I think that it's a fun Western adventure that I enjoy watching. This movie is up there on my favorite list with the Gunsmoke made for TV movies, Once Upon A Texas Train, etc. For a number of these great actors, like Jack Elam, Richard Widmark, to name a few, these made for TV Westerns were the last of their movie careers. I wish the networks would make a more of these types of movies, because the Western frontier is such an important part of American History. I just bought the movie on DVD, which has been hard to find. I give this movie 10 stars and 2 thumbs up!!!