Cinema: Stalled Express

BREAKHEART PASS

Directed by TOM CRIES Screenplay by ALISTAIR MACLEAN

Breakheart Pass has the trappings of a classic western: a fine old steam train carrying a detachment of soldiers makes its way through picturesque but hostile country. Everyone aboard is fearful of Indian attack, yet bravely determined to relieve an isolated garrison whose force has been decimated by disease. From these elements one might well fashion an outdoor drama of stark simplicity, a clean-lined action picture of the sort no one seems to make any more. The trouble is that Writer Mac-Lean, adapting his own novel, is at heart a puzzlemaker, not a picturemaker. So all that nice scenery whizzes wastefully by outside the windows, while he concentrates his attention on the fancy private car that has been hooked on the train. It contains a lot of characters whose chief function is to be mysteriously bumped off at metronomic inter vals, leading to the natural conclusion that one of the dwindling number of sur vivors must be a murderer. Among them are the Governor of the unnamed state they are traversing, his lady, a lawman and his prisoner Charles Bronson.

Bunch of Bores. Everyone accuser Bronson of doing the evil, and since he maintains that enigmatic silence which has become his trademark, one cannol help tending to agree. He looks as if he would like to kill somebody, very possibly Maclean or Director Gries — the former for penning him up with this bunch of bores, the latter for never finding some visually interesting way to cut through the excessively intricate plot After a lot of witless blather, it turns out that Bronson was only pretending to be a baddie — big surprise! — that he is really a federal agent in disguise. Naturally it also turns out that just about everyone left alive in that plush car when the Indians finally get around to attacking is in on a scheme to grab some min eral wealth they are not entitled to. A dose of mineral water is what this congested movie needs, however — especially if the film makers had used it to wash down a therapeutic amount of amphetamine.