Shalako

Lots of shooting, galloping, terse dialogue—it is the perfect movie to see in a two-theater town on a Saturday night.

The film is a slow starter while the various characters are being established and has an over-abrupt and inconclusive ending. Intriguing are the relationships between members of the hunting party.

Strangely enough, the long-awaited meeting between Connery and Miss Bardot is a flop. They look yearningly at each other a lot, and once he puts his arms around her and they fall out of camera range, but otherwise no sparks are struck.

It's one of those movies in which the hero has to be a man of few words because if he ever explained anything to the other characters they wouldn't get into the trouble they get into that he has to get them out of, and there wouldn't be a movie. There isn't much of one anyway.

The Connery-Bardot pairing that Shalako offers simply can't pump much life into this otherwise typical big-budget western set in 19th-century New Mexico.