Bite the Bullet

Why would nine people ride seven hundred miles on horseback in a few days, at the start of the twentieth century? A newspaper has put up the prize, and the field lines up with a woman, Miss Jones (Candice Bergen), an Englishman, a Mexican, two cowboys young and old, and two friends, Sam Clayton (Gene Hackman) and Luke Matthews (James Coburn). Richard Brooks shoots the riders small against the open country and keeps the horses and the dust in nearly every frame.