I do not think this film is a turd, as true masters of the fecal arts such as Ewe Boll, Pauly Shore, or Michael Bay set a very high bar for overall poopiness, and this just isn't that ambitious a film. It lacks the epic sweep of a 'Yentl' or 'Heaven's Gate (jeez, another western Harrison Ford should have been in)', it lacks the star-studded cast of an 'Inchon' or 'Midway' (two veritable scheissfests, for which, were we in a truly free world, Charleton Heston and Laurence Olivier would surely have gone to the firing squad for their acting), and of course CGI didn't exist in 1979, and other than dynamite, things just didn't really explode in 1850 quite the way they do in wartime, or in films dealing with killer giant robots from another planet.
If Mel Brooks directed this film instead of Robert Aldritch, do you suppose Tommy might have pulled a gun on Avram, only to relent after thinking the act of shooting him might be considered anti-semitic? How kosher is a fish that's been shot through the head? This is not amateurish cinema to inspire such questions, nor does it depend, as a film, on John Ford-esque vistas of a Wild West that barely existed anyways (how is it half of the entire history of the Old West takes place in Monument Valley? This is one busy place, I tell you!).
The main problem with this film is its idiosyncracies, and that, as a revisionist western film, which surely it is, it must somehow appeal more broadly to its audience than a conventional western film. This is why it fails where films like 'Blazing Saddles' and 'Unforgiven' succeed. Only devout jews can truly appreciate Avram Belinski, and only expert cowboys can appreciate Tommy Lillard. This is too small an audience.
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