3 out of 10
 

From the Director of "Men in Black" comes... ...exactly the same film! Same "plot" (or rather lack of it), same dialogue and mostly the same actors, this time though, in period costumes and set in the 1860`s.

The idea of a couple of James Bond characters set in the technology of the Industrial Revolution a century plus ago seems charming and attractive and the Director and production team have had to work overtime to give this film its overwhelmingly stale flavour of rancid sweat. Religiously, they’ve kept to the same old, threadbare plot, served up by James Bond for 30 years: rich man plans world domination with a technological wonder - it’s so predictable, you can guess the lines before the actor do. And without nuclear technology, the result is laughable - how could anyone threaten the USA with a single, albeit large, tank with a couple of powerful guns? One volley from a Yankee cannon battery and she’d be sent straight to the scrap yard.

At a more basic level, the morality is, at best, dubious. Whilst the villains, like Loveless, are all black-hating ex-Confederates, we’re supposed to be cheering and rolling about in our seats with laughter whenever the hero, Jim West, delivers another mouthful of insulting sarcasm at a crippled man in a wheelchair. The message is clear - racism is wrong, but the disabled deserve all the whipping you want to give them. Furthermore, the filmmakers remembered, apparently 5 minutes before shooting the film, that there ought to be at least one woman in the film - so there she is, looking like an autograph hunter who’s strayed onto the set by accident and about as useful and relevant to it with nothing whatsoever to add to the plot - however little there is.