Breakheart Pass

From the Editors

Charles Bronson (The Magnificent Seven, Death Wish) is at his dynamic, heroic best inthis suspenseful action-packed mystery-western based on the best-selling novel by Alistair MacLean (Where Eagles Dare). With a powerful cast that includes Ben Johnson (The Last Picture Show), Richard Crenna (First Blood), Jill Ireland (Death Wish II) and Charles Durning (Tootsie), Breakheart Pass throws open the throttle for runaway excitement! At the height of the frontier era, a locomotive races through the Rocky Mountains on a classified mission to a remote Army post. But one by one, the passengers are being murdered! Their only hope is John Deakin (Bronson), a mysterious prisoner-in-transit who must fight for his life - and the lives ofeveryone on the train - as he uncovers a deadly secret that explodes in a torrent of shocking revelations, explosive brawls and blazing gun battles.
Description

Customer Response

Great Movie
Great quality DVD. As a Charles Bronson fan, this was one of those hard to find favorites of mine. Delivery was fast. Excellent movie

Breakheart Pass DVD Review
This is an interesting and different Western with a fine cast. The 1.85:1 widescreen DVD is enhanced for 16:9 TVs; however, the picture quality is just of average quality.

Steam, smoke and steel rails plus a good mystery
While I agree with other 4- and 5-star reviewers that the plot, acting and video quality of Breakheart Pass is very good, this review is from a railfan's viewpoint regarding the accuracy and value of the railroad footage. When Trains Magazine publishes a special edition in January, 2010, naming its choice of the 100 all-time best train movies, I would expect Breakheart Pass to rank near the top. The exterior photography is excellent. The train trip occupies 100% of the story, from the opening to the closing scene. More than 90% of the scenes that do not show the exterior of the train take place inside the train.

Weaknesses: There is only one train involved. Although the trip supposedly takes two days, no other trains are met or passed. Only once in the plot does the train stop to take on water and only one other time does the steam locomotive require a fuel stop (for wood). The year in which the action takes place is not specified, but the train equipment appears too modern (early 20th Century rather than late 19th Century) for a wood-burning locomotive to be appropriate. The brown and tan paint on the locomotive seems out of place, but only during the opening station stop at Myrtle is this a distraction. Apparently the train is expected to run through wilderness for two days without an engine crew change. It does stop overnight so that the engineer can sleep for "not more than six hours". It is not realistic to imagine a railroad so isolated that it has no support facilities.

Filmed on the Camas Prairie Railroad southeast of Lewiston, Idaho, the movie railroad is called the Wasatch & Nevada R.R. and although not identified, the story presumably takes place in Utah. As such, mountain scenes perhaps should have more Aspen and fewer evergreen trees.

Based on the percentage of train footage, Breakheart Pass ranks favorably with the likes of Emperor of the North, The Train, El Ultimo Tren, The Titfield Thunderbolt and Tough Guys for railroad content. Plus it is packaged around a good "who done it" mystery yarn.

Wrong description
The description says:
Breakheart Pass [VHS] (1968)
Starring: Gian Maria Volontè, Klaus Kinski Director: Damiano Damiani

I was expecting a movie by Gian Maria Volontè.But the picture shows Charles Bronson. And starring is Charles Bronson.
Gian Maria Volontè is italian and Charles Bronson is american.You can't mistaken one for another.

Very poor job of amazon.com

Charles Bronson and Yakima Canute make an exciting movie where the plot is almost nonexistent and the stunts are great
Something's not right at isolated Fort Humbolt and diphtheria may be the least of the problems. Breakheart Pass is based on the adventure thriller by Alistair MacLean, who also wrote the screenplay. It's not bad as a Bronson vehicle except for its excesses: An obvious 1970s score glued on a movie that's set a century earlier; one action set piece after another, most a lot of fun but so many that the storyline becomes just the excuse for the set pieces; and corny directorial indulgences that have nearly every character in the movie exchanging suspicious glances with one another at key moments, accompanied by music stings.

What Breakheart Pass has going for it are some fine character actors like Ben Johnson, Charles Durning and David Huddleston; the look of the film...the hovel of the tiny rail town of Myrtle in the Rockies, dry, gray, worn-out plank buildings, a shack of a train station, a utilitarian brothel that's all business; the tired steam engine and worn carriages but with a plush interior of the wood-paneled dining car and parlor; the rugged snow-covered Sierra Nevada mountains; the stunt work directed by Yakima Canute in his last picture; and, of course, Charles Bronson, phlegmatic, stoic, always watching and seldom speaking. Bronson sure wasn't handsome but he had a memorable, worn and craggy face, even with that Fu Manchu moustache he often wore. He also had the screen presence of a basically tough good man who could do, when aroused, violence that would hurt. Few major movie stars were as unlikely as Bronson.

What's the fuss at Fort Humbolt? It has something to do with conspiracy, treachery, rifles and gold...the usual. All we know is that we're on board a train carrying medical supplies and provisions to aid the sick soldiers at the fort. Aboard is the territorial governor, the daughter of the fort's commander, a doctor, a minister, a train official, a major, some of his soldiers and a lawman with his prisoner, a man called Deakin (Charles Bronson). We don't really care, even when the passengers start being murdered. We learn those supplies seem to consist of rifles and ammunition and that Deakin is no bad guy, but this is predictable. All those great stunt set pieces just pile on and make the plot irrelevant. There are fights atop the moving train, the steam engine billows out huge white clouds of steam as it chugs and rattles across a high, rickety wooden bridge, men fall and bounce off that bridge, corpses are discovered in firewood piles, in rifle boxes and in train compartments, Indians rampage and attack, there's a cavalry charge across the snow, a runaway troop car crashes down a mountainside, you name it. Best of all, most of the movie takes place in and around that steam engine, clattering and swaying over the tracks through the mountains. Engine Number 9 should have received star billing alongside Bronson. Just about everyone on the train is suspicious and only Deakin is smart and tough enough to figure things out and then do something about it. With the stunts, with Bronson and with that steam engine, Breakheart Pass could make a great theme park ride.

That sentiment holds true of most of Alistair MacLean's books. He was an immensely successful writer of thrillers that featured the same formula: Workmanlike plots, lots of action, little or no sex (it got in the way of the action, MacLean thought) and indestructible heroes. He wrote about 30 thrillers. The last half were nothing but tired exercises in theme park rides. His reputation now probably rests on two movies made from his books, Where Eagles Dare and The Guns of Navarone. For those who enjoy well-written adventure thrillers by authors on their way to being forgotten, try some of the books by Desmond Bagley, James Leasor, Geoffrey Jenkins, and Victor Canning.

Breakheart Pass has an okay DVD transfer, with wide screen on one side of the disc and pan-and-scan on the other. There are no extras.

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