Having initially earned his spurs as Palladin in 'Have Gun, Will Travel', Fox had sufficient confidence in the star quality of Richard Boone to showcase his talents in CinemaScope on the big screen in this adaptation of his own novel by Clair Huffaker set in the aftermath of the Civil War in which he plays a scruffy old
renegade who polishes his talent for rubbing his subordinates the wrong way and demonstrates a healthy disrespect for authority when he tells ambitious junior officer Stuart Whitman "you're stupid enough to become a general!"
For most of the film's duration Tony Franciosa gives the film's most eccentric performance as a sombrero-wearing Mexican flashing his teeth in a Zapata moustache; but even he is surpassed when Edmond O'Brien finally appears as a crazy old general presiding over his own personal Heart of Darkness - with a Confederate flag still proudly hanging over his mantelpiece - who serious believes that the South lost the war because they were "insufficiency ruthless".
For most of the film's duration Tony Franciosa gives the film's most eccentric performance as a sombrero-wearing Mexican flashing his teeth in a Zapata moustache; but even he is surpassed when Edmond O'Brien finally appears as a crazy old general presiding over his own personal Heart of Darkness - with a Confederate flag still proudly hanging over his mantelpiece - who serious believes that the South lost the war because they were "insufficiency ruthless".