The film opens with what looks like a fairly bad bunch of gunslingers waits for the train to arrive to drop off the man they were sent to kill. The three baddies are ready when the nameless character appears as the train departs but they are no match for the man with the harmonica and the gun. The slaughter sets the tone for the film as the bad guys have no redeeming features at all.The man with the harmonica has been on the same train as Mrs McBain, played by Cardinale, who has come to this rather desolate outpost looking for the man she married a month earlier. She can?t find the boy who was supposed to pick her up, not knowing at that time that he, his father, his sister and younger brother had all been brutally slain by Frank, played by Fonda. She heads to the trading post and enters a dark world where Cheyenne, played by Robards, makes a grand entrance after shooting the guards who were apparently escorting him to jail. Cheyenne has his first encounter with Harmonica and they are to cross paths many times throughout the film.Eventually Mrs McBain makes her way out to the family property, only to find the welcome party had turned in to a wake. She decides to stay on as the film turns to Frank and his relationship with the dying Railroad baron. The men are ruthless in their endeavours to push the railroad through to the west coast and the violent nature of Frank is evident for all to see. He is the lieutenant who obviously wants to be the man in charge and he progressively eliminates those who might get in his way.Initially unknown to Mrs McBain, her late husband had the foresight to buy up a pretty worthless property that would become very expensive when the railroad came through looking for water. He had almost lived to realise his dream until Frank?s bullet intervened and it takes a while for the widow to find out the deal. But Harmonica knows and teams up with Cheyenne to get everything ready for the railroad, eventually having the gunfight that he just had to have with Frank. We then find out that Harmonica has harboured a grudge against Frank for many years for killing his brother and justice can seen to be done when Harmonica wins the shootout.There is a strong current of sexual tension between Cardinale and the three main male characters. At once stage Harmonica rips her bodice away to help reveal the ample Cardinale cleavage; Cheyenne is always looking like he would like to ravage her where ever and when ever he sees her; and Frank actually strips her half-naked in one scene that helped get the rating up above G. But as an ex-whore from New Orleans Mrs McBain knows how to play each on the boys on a break and is able to maintain her hold over them all right until the end.In an interesting opener, Jack Elam as one of the baddies shows that you don?t have to have a pretty face to get into movies as the film focuses on his attempts to kill a fly while killing time waiting for the train. On the other hand, Cardinale shows that having a pretty face and ample bosom doesn?t hurt either when trying to get in to films. It is a pity that her acting capacity is very limited, knowing looks across a plunging neckline seeming to be the best she can do. Fonda, Robards and Bronson play their parts adequately. Each of them is a very menacing character and the fact that the first two die before the end of the film is just deserts for their characters. Fonda is particularly evil, shooting down the youngest McBain son in cold blood as a testimony to his lack of morals. Now there will be plenty of people who will wax lyrical about this Sergio Leone film and I have seen the good ratings it has received on other sites. But I am not convinced that this overly long film with suspect lip sync and an ordinary musical score deserves the accolades. The plot has an interesting premise but then drags the whole thing out for well over two hours. Fonda, Robards and Bronson must have done it for the money late in their careers while Cardinale perhaps always wanted to be in a western. On the bonus disk they have the cheek to call this her ?finest English language performance?. The rest of them must have been pretty ordinary!Now I know we shouldn?t necessarily expect much from the spaghetti western genre (Bud Spencer has a lot to answer for) but Eastwood could do them and make it work. Maybe the art of this film went over my head. Maybe the high quality of the cast trying to deal with a low quality script jarred a little. Whatever it was I wasn?t impressed and had written ?long and boring? in my notes well before the end. Tighter editing would have produced a much better movie in my opinion and this is one DVD that will go to the back of the drawer and stay there.

THE EXTRAS

You can have subtitles a commentary track by the Director, cast and crew if you like on the main disk. On the bonus disk there are Documentaries about the railroad revolutionising the West; a stills galley of the locations, then and now, a Production stills gallery and the original trailer. There are also cast bios where I picked up the waffle about Cardinale’s finest English language performance.

CONCLUSION

The ruthless sidekick to a dying Railway baron tries to cheat a family out of its rightful money when the railroad goes through the area. But salvation is at hand in the odd pairing of Cheyenne, the murderous crook, and a nameless, shadowy figure who plays the harmonica, but can shoot straight too.