While Peckinpah fans will go to their graves insisting on it's high quality; (invisable only to us non Peckhead morons}; the fact remains right up their on the screen in any version: this is a nicely shot but vapid film, filled with uneven performances, dumb dialog, and pretentiously rehashed ideas from other Peckinpah films. <br /><br />You might not have like Peckinpah's ideas in "Straw Dogs" or even "The Wild Bunch", but they were certainly guided by an original, virtuoso hand. Here characters wonder into a scene, crack a dirty joke, scratch themselves, and shoot somebody, or... maybe not. Peckinpah seems to be blowing vainglorious raspberry's at his critics, there are scenes of pointless cruelty enacted by the film's anti-heroes, animal abuse, and women whores who always seem happily mute in their work. <br /><br />The cast, the photography, and Bob Dylan's good score give it curio value; and the Slim Pickens scene works well. This is, however, tough going and ultimately pretty dull. When you hear the commentators fawning over the film on the commentary, you can't help but thinking some of this sort of stuff played a part in the man's downfall. As Dylan once said of his early rock performances, met with vicious booing: "Well, you can kill somebody with kindness."