This movie has just about as much wrong with it as right. While the plot involving greed and a search for gold is excellent and there was a good movie underneath it all, several things help to derail the production and keep this from being a better film--despite its wonderful cast. First, the beginning and ending song by Jose Feliciano is very dated and very annoying. I hated it thoroughly. Second, a lot of really fine character actors enter the film and unfortunately, in most cases, they die so quickly and without making much of an impact on the film, it's a real waste. Third, the ending is great if you have a strong ability to suspend disbelief AND you believe in a lot of spiritual mumbo jumbo. I didn't and so I thought the ending was pretty dopey. Gregory Peck is fine in the film, as always, but I thought it very odd that they cast Omar Sharif as a Mexican and Ted Cassidy and Julie Newmar as American Indians but this is only a minor quibble.

MACKENNA'S GOLD is a typical American western made with Leone's epic of THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY in mind; this influence is clear both in the film's epic length and in some of the staging which is very Leone-esque at times. The story is quite simple, involving Gregory Peck's lawman being taken captive by Omar Sharif's bandit and forced to lead him to a legendary desert location said to hide a fortune in gold. A huge amount of famous faces pop up in support, including the likes of Eli Wallach, Anthony Quayle and Edward G. Robinson, but they're oddly underutilised. Apparently there were some problems during the film's production which resulted in an hour of the running time being chopped out, which leaves some problems in the plot and the like. Still, it's a well-shot yarn and there are some good scenes here, so it's not all bad.

Well I'd like to be as confident as some of the reviewers here who thought the movie was just great but there are too many flaws in the picture to get that positive about it. I thought MacKenna (Gregory Peck) offered a pretty good hook for the story early on when he told Colorado (Omar Sharif) that "we can play some poker along the way". It gave the impression that there would be some compelling battle of wits here between the good guy and the bad guy, but sadly the story just didn't come together that way for me. And speaking of Sharif's character, he was supposed to be Mexican, right? So why not Juan instead of John? Still wondering about that one.

If you wanted to come up with an all star Western movie cast I don't think you could have done a better job than this one, but boy, what a sad waste of talent. When the opening credits mentioned 'The Men From Hadleyburg' I was all set for something really special, and with Lee J. Cobb, Raymond Massey, Burgess Meredith, Anthony Quayle, Edward G. Robinson and Eli Wallach in the lineup, there was no way there should have been any disappointment. Sadly, I was proved wrong, and I haven't even mentioned Keenan Wynn and Telly Savalas yet.

If not for the presence of Julie Newmar, this might have been a real downer. I can't say for sure if she really did her swim scene in the nude, but at least that was a nifty diversion to take one's mind off the rest of the story. One of the things that really brought things down for me were the close-up riding scenes with Lancaster and Sharif, utilizing rear projection photography. When I see that in a picture I always ask myself why they couldn't have taken the actors outside and put them on a horse for real. What would be so hard about that?

As far as the resolution to the story, this is where things take a real slide down hill, both literally and figuratively. When the ground started shaking apart and the mountain walls started separating I was reminded of the way all those cheesy prehistoric dinosaur flicks come to an end before the hero makes it out of harm's way. The film makers must have thought the idea was pretty cool because a couple of the same scenes were repeated more than once, which only served to lengthen the movie a few minutes more than it needed to.

Sorry I can't be more positive about things but that's just the way it goes sometimes. I guess every actor winds up with a clunker every now and then, too bad so many otherwise great actors would up in this one all at the same time.