One of the best westerns

I'm surprised this movie has not received more air time on cable. I saw it for the first time on AMC this morning, I thought it was a well crafted Western. Excellent acting by Bo Hopkins and Geoffrey Lewis, who's one of the best character actors of all time. The ending wasn't really believable to me though. You have experienced gunfighters with the benefit of cover and open terrain and they STILL didn't kill all of the guys charging at them on their horses? It was basically a stalemate because the cowardly kid was the only one left alive. Personally if I had been one of the ranch hands and I saw that he wasn't fighting, I would have shot him for being a coward. And the kid's insistence on burying them at the end is supposed to make you for his shortcomings during the gunfight? I thought the ending should have been different. I loved the movie up until the end.

I agree I saw this movie on tv as a kid several times very real and moving.

I've got a job, a secretary, a mother, two ex-wives and several bartenders that depend upon me

I consider this one of the three greatest westerns.

Along with Shane and High Noon.

This movie might have been a more realistic portrayal of cowboy life than the tv shows you listed, but it really isn't very realistic. 50% of cowboys were black or mexican/indian and if there had been as much shooting and killing on cattle drives as in this movie there wouldn't have been any cattle drives. My favorite tv cowboy show alternated between "Gunsmoke", "The Rifleman", and "Have Gun Will Travel". What better life could a guy ask for than blowing bad guys away during the day then "sipping whiskey" with Miss Kitty at night?

Not only am I old enough to have seen all those tv shows when they first came out , but old enough to have talked to much older relatives from Kansas and that part of the country who grew up at the end of the era portrayed in those tv shows and this movie, and even had one set of relatives who still owned and operated a 4 generation cattle ranch with cowboys and cattle that had to be rounded up etc. Needless to say these people were much amused by the general inaccuracies of the tv shows and similar movies, particularly to the extent to which the type of life portrayed in these movies was romanticized or made to seem exciting and glamorous.

I agree.