After what can only be described as one of the most ludicrous firing squad scenarios I've ever seen, the irritated confederate prisoners under the command of "Bentley" (George Hamilton) decide that they are going to avenge themselves on their blue-shirted counterparts and so they duly kill some guards, trash the fort with the cannon and skedaddle. "Maj. Walcott" (Glenn Ford) is duly dispatched to apprehend them and what ensues now is quite possibly the worst main-stream western I have ever seen. Ford just doesn't look like he cared and no amount of facial hair is going to lend enough gravitas to the perpetually underwhelming Hamilton as the story heads down the same wagon trail as quite literally thousands of it's civil war cinematic forebears. The production is almost as bad as the script, which is back of an envelope stuff - and the contribution from Inger Stevens as the kidnapped, wronged and vengeful "Emily" (the fiancée of "Walcott") is just bizarre. Keep an eye out for a young-ish Harrison Ford if you can be bothered sitting through this, and you may also spot Todd Armstrong - having fallen quite a way since "Jason and the Argonauts" (1963) but it's a long and unfulfilling old slog riddled with banal dialogue to an ending that I could have done with about seventy minutes earlier.
Review of A Time for Killing
