The sprawling GUNS OF HONOR could have been a sequel to GETTYSBURG, so conscientious is it in reprising virtually everything about that costume epic, right down to Martin Sheen's thrift-shop ante-bellum accent. Based on the Floating Outfit series of historical novels by J.T. Edson, it
chronicles a curious accident of history, when ex-Confederates and French soldiers clashed in Mexico just after the Civil War. Ultimately, the film is undone by its own ambition: it suffers from too much historical detail compacted into a rickety narrative frame.
Martin Sheen is an ex-Confederate officer sent to Mexico in 1866 to deliver a presidential amnesty to General Sheldon (Adrian Steed), leader of a ragtag band of Confederates running guns to the Mexican bandit Almonte (Bill Flynn), in a bid for power against Emperor Maximilian and his French
allies. But beneath its agenda of healing old wounds, the US government secretly believes the French will roll across the Rio Grande, should the Mexican domino fall, and can't risk interceding in this dispute as long as Confederate troops are still there, for fear of rekindling the Civil War on
foreign soil. Aiding Sheldon in his quest are ex-Confederate Texas Light Cavalry maverick Dusty Fog (Christopher Atkins) and a festering half-breed known simply as The Kid (Todd Jensen), whose father was murdered by Giss (Frank Notaro), an intermediary in the gun-running deal.
Once on the border, they link up with beautiful ex-southern spy Belle Boyd (Janine Denison), who has a Mexican nobleman's son in tow, and all five head into interior Mexico to find the Confederate renegades, their cache of Winchester rifles, and bandit Almonte, who the Kid believes will lead him
to Giss. The story is intercut with scenes of General Sheldon and the Confederates, dug in and waging trench warfare against the surly French, who are led by a Captain Bordeaux (Gerard Christopher, an Australian). When their different agendas cause them to part company, Fog and the Kid are pinned
down by Bordeaux and the French, only to be rescued by the jocular Almonte, who wants his rifles. When Belle is killed in an ambush by Giss and his rebels, the others hunt him down for revenge. Sheldon finally receives his amnesty, to return home the conquering hero.
GUNS OF HONOR, released to home video in 1994, is clearly made for television, judging by the commercial fades, and was no doubt once a miniseries, given the incoherence of the plot. Whole story lines have apparently been simply excised, leaving those with star billing barely evident in the
picture at all (e.g., Jurgen Prochnow, listed first in the credits as one of Sheldon's men, has literally six lines in the finished film, and Corbin Bernsen, listed as the third lead, is missing altogether). To make up for this, key bits of exposition are crammed into a last-minute voice-over, and
major characters appear out of nowhere just to tie up the loose ends. And though the overland trail ride and Old Mexico exteriors do carry a hint of LONESOME DOVE, that's still no excuse to have a water moccasin spook the horses as they're fording a river, almost drowning one of the men--one
memorable scene from that television epic which was simply lifted wholesale. GUNS OF HONOR may have carried more weight in the original incarnation. Cut to size like this, it's impossible to tell. (Violence, nudity, sexual situations, adult situations, profanity.) leave a comment
