wonderfully daft piece of movie making that actually grow bad with age and welcome to hard time be a presumably honest description of the feeling author e l doctorow experience when view the burt kennedy screen version of his work . by turn jaunty and tedious and unfathomable and unwatchable and it actually suffer from a great absence of structure than the town it purport to chronicle and a place which keep be and er and burn down by a laughing madman who no one can stop because he a symbol . most of the time and of course and this doesn not matter and because kennedy think he direct a musical and a sort of seven whore for seven miner and a a result of which one scene after another have dance girl a dancing and drink men a drinking and all of this to the accompaniment of a music score that if not play by someone tone deaf be certainly write by one . script felicity be many and varied and though none be more reward than the scene where fonda be tell that the mine upon whose fortune the town depend have just close and after which he immediately beg his adopted son to settle down in this selfsame place of doom and earn himself an education instead of play around with gun . logic and right . when it not be burn down and the town a tent and two wood frame building whose nouvelle vague minimalism be echo by a cemetery with just one grave be regularly assail by janice rule hilarious irish accent and though she certainly get her just dessert ( a indeed and do nearly all the cast and shoot down either accidentally or deliberately in a climax so stupefyingly barmy that you wonder if russ meyer assume the direction after kennedy take an errant slug . ) with a budget to die for well and no self respect production designer could contemplate live on the money allocate here welcome to hard time inadvertently deliver so much in the way of good time that it seem uncharitable to criticise . but then and my name isn not doctorow .