Breakheart Pass
by Tom Gries
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Ben Johnson, Charles Bronson, Charles Durning, Jill Ireland, Richard CrennaDirector: Tom Gries
Cinematographer: Lucien Ballard
Editor: Byron 'Buzz' Brandt
Producer: Elliott Kastner
Producer: Jerry Gershwin
Writer: Alistair MacLean
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0; French (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0; Spanish (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); Spanish (Dubbed), Dolby Digital 2.0
Format: Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Color, DVD-Video, Full Screen, NTSC, Widescreen
Picture Format: Anamorphic Widescreen, 1.33:1
Running Time: 95 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2000-12-19
Audience Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Studio: MGM (Video & DVD)
Movie Reviews of Breakheart Pass
Movie Review: Charles Bronson and Yakima Canute make an exciting movie where the plot is almost nonexistent and the stunts are great
Summary: 4 Stars
Something's not right at isolated Fort Humbolt and diphtheria may be the least of the problems. Breakheart Pass is based on the adventure thriller by Alistair MacLean, who also wrote the screenplay. It's not bad as a Bronson vehicle except for its excesses: An obvious 1970s score glued on a movie that's set a century earlier; one action set piece after another, most a lot of fun but so many that the storyline becomes just the excuse for the set pieces; and corny directorial indulgences that have nearly every character in the movie exchanging suspicious glances with one another at key moments, accompanied by music stings.
What Breakheart Pass has going for it are some fine character actors like Ben Johnson, Charles Durning and David Huddleston; the look of the film...the hovel of the tiny rail town of Myrtle in the Rockies, dry, gray, worn-out plank buildings, a shack of a train station, a utilitarian brothel that's all business; the tired steam engine and worn carriages but with a plush interior of the wood-paneled dining car and parlor; the rugged snow-covered Sierra Nevada mountains; the stunt work directed by Yakima Canute in his last picture; and, of course, Charles Bronson, phlegmatic, stoic, always watching and seldom speaking. Bronson sure wasn't handsome but he had a memorable, worn and craggy face, even with that Fu Manchu moustache he often wore. He also had the screen presence of a basically tough good man who could do, when aroused, violence that would hurt. Few major movie stars were as unlikely as Bronson.
What's the fuss at Fort Humbolt? It has something to do with conspiracy, treachery, rifles and gold...the usual. All we know is that we're on board a train carrying medical supplies and provisions to aid the sick soldiers at the fort. Aboard is the territorial governor, the daughter of the fort's commander, a doctor, a minister, a train official, a major, some of his soldiers and a lawman with his prisoner, a man called Deakin (Charles Bronson). We don't really care, even when the passengers start being murdered. We learn those supplies seem to consist of rifles and ammunition and that Deakin is no bad guy, but this is predictable. All those great stunt set pieces just pile on and make the plot irrelevant. There are fights atop the moving train, the steam engine billows out huge white clouds of steam as it chugs and rattles across a high, rickety wooden bridge, men fall and bounce off that bridge, corpses are discovered in firewood piles, in rifle boxes and in train compartments, Indians rampage and attack, there's a cavalry charge across the snow, a runaway troop car crashes down a mountainside, you name it. Best of all, most of the movie takes place in and around that steam engine, clattering and swaying over the tracks through the mountains. Engine Number 9 should have received star billing alongside Bronson. Just about everyone on the train is suspicious and only Deakin is smart and tough enough to figure things out and then do something about it. With the stunts, with Bronson and with that steam engine, Breakheart Pass could make a great theme park ride.
That sentiment holds true of most of Alistair MacLean's books. He was an immensely successful writer of thrillers that featured the same formula: Workmanlike plots, lots of action, little or no sex (it got in the way of the action, MacLean thought) and indestructible heroes. He wrote about 30 thrillers. The last half were nothing but tired exercises in theme park rides. His reputation now probably rests on two movies made from his books, Where Eagles Dare and The Guns of Navarone. For those who enjoy well-written adventure thrillers by authors on their way to being forgotten, try some of the books by Desmond Bagley, James Leasor, Geoffrey Jenkins, and Victor Canning.
Breakheart Pass has an okay DVD transfer, with wide screen on one side of the disc and pan-and-scan on the other. There are no extras.
Summary of Breakheart Pass
Charles Bronson (The Magnificent Seven, Death Wish) is at his dynamic, heroic best inthis suspenseful action-packed mystery-western based on the best-selling novel by Alistair MacLean (Where Eagles Dare). With a powerful cast that includes Ben Johnson (The Last Picture Show), Richard Crenna (First Blood), Jill Ireland (Death Wish II) and Charles Durning (Tootsie), Breakheart Pass throws open the throttle for runaway excitement! At the height of the frontier era, a locomotive races through the Rocky Mountains on a classified mission to a remote Army post. But one by one, the passengers are being murdered! Their only hope is John Deakin (Bronson), a mysterious prisoner-in-transit who must fight for his life - and the lives ofeveryone on the train - as he uncovers a deadly secret that explodes in a torrent of shocking revelations, explosive brawls and blazing gun battles.Adventure movies are hard to come by these days--they've been replaced by action movies, which favor fast cars and big explosions over the dangers of nature and explorations of human character. Breakheart Pass stars Charles Bronson as a mysterious petty criminal on the Western frontier. After being caught cheating at cards, he's arrested and held on a military transport train heading through the Rocky Mountains toward a fort on the coast, a fort stricken with diphtheria and in desperate need of the medical supplies on the train. But there's a conspiracy afoot--people on the train keep getting killed or disappearing--and the situation at the fort isn't what it seems either. Alistair MacLean adapted the screenplay from his own novel, and it's a well-plotted, efficient piece of work, made more compelling by a cast of solid character actors, ranging from Charles Durning (The Sting, Tootsie), Richard Crenna (Body Heat), and Ben Johnson (Oscar winner for The Last Picture Show) to guys whose faces you'll recognize, even if their names don't sound familiar. Breakheart Pass isn't The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, and Bronson isn't Humphrey Bogart, but the movie is a lean adventure flick with an outstanding score by Jerry Goldsmith. (Trivia buffs will catch Sam Elliot and Sally Kirkland in bit parts.) --Bret Fetzer
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