 Critic Roger Ebert included the film in his review collection The Great Movies , rating it four stars out of four . Ebert stated that it was a " great " film and also an anti @-@ establishment one during the time of the Vietnam War . He believed that the film was a product of its time and that no major film company would be interested in producing a film of such " physical punishment , psychological cruelty , hopelessness and equal parts of sadism and masochism " today . He praised the cinematography , capturing the " punishing heat " of the location , and stated that " the physical presence of Paul Newman is the reason this movie works : The smile , the innocent blue eyes , the lack of strutting , " which no other actor could have produced as effectively . 
