A paella-western, with Yul Brynner wearing a wig and a sadistic sneer as the Mexican folk hero. The original script was written by Sam Peckinpah, who hoped to direct it but Brynner objected to Peckinpah's story. A TV director (Buzz Kulik) was brought in and Robert Towne - who later wroteChinatown - gave the script a makeover. The result is a botched job, watchable only for a few rousing action scenes and for Robert Mitchum's sleepy-eyed gun-runner who literally flies in and out of the story.

Pulled into the Mexican Revolution by his own greed, Texas gunrunner and pilot Lee Arnold joins bandit-turned-patriot Pancho Villa and his band of dedicated men in a march across Mexico battling the Colorados and stealing women's hearts as they go. But each has a nemesis among his friends: Arnold is tormented by Fierro, Villa's right-hand-man; and Villa must face possible betrayal by his own president's naiveté