Bite The Bullet

Spendid period piece about an endurance horse race. The plot is not unlike THE GREAT RACE or THOSE MAGNIFICENT MEN IN THEIR FLYING MACHINES in that a disparate group is assembled, lots of secondary stories are opened, and the race begins. The film is very episodic rather than having a driving force behind it. Brooks writes and directs well, but there are very few people who can do both on the same picture; here it's the writing that fails. There is nothing to the story that we haven't seen before. The participants gather, we learn too little about them and their motivations for running this incredible race on horseback, the race begins, things happen. BITE THE BULL...