Guns of Honor

"A stellar cast, including Martin Sheen, Christopher Atkins and Jurgen Prochnow, star in this fast and furious adventure set across the Rio Grande just after the great Civil War. Defeated Confederate soldiers, branded outlaws by their own government, are recruited for one final mission to restore their lost glory. Aided by a beautiful former Southern spy, they are assigned to run guns to the Mexican Government. After blasting it out with the local rebels, these renegades must then pass through territory controlled by the invading French Army. With nothings to lose, they ride bravely into battle, determined to regain their honor and prepared for anything that lies ahead!" according to the VHS sleeve synopsis. The synopsis is a good one, but the movie is still confusing.

An opening narration provides a slightly different picture - "Mexico 1866. The freedom of the Mexican people is being trampled beneath the heel of emperor Maximilian and his invading French allies. Caught up in the Mexican conflict are the Confederate troops who refused to surrender to the Union Army at the end of the American Civil War. With nowhere else to turn, they fled south across the Rio Grande. Proud, desperate men, they've been branded outlaws, and it's my job to being 'em all home." This may have been the opening to a series of stories. But, this does give you an idea about what is going on - and, you need all the help you can get with these movies. That they are directed and edited with obvious haste - which means, not very well.

The three top-billed actors - Jurgen Prochnow, Martin Sheen and Corbin Bernsen - are not the leading actors. Instead, the film stars cute, long-haired Christopher Atkins (as Dusty Fog), with "wise-ass half-breed" Todd Jensen (as Lon "The Kid" Ysabel) and former "Superboy" Gerard Christopher (as Mark Counter) those that would make it a threesome. There are plenty of good-looking men with great hair, two brief flashes of beautiful breasts, along with a lot of gunfire. And, the story had potential. The first DVD edition of this film mistakenly substituted its own non-network TV's movie sequel (or mini-series?) "Trigger Fast" (1994), but with the cover design from the "Guns of Honor" VHS. Par for the course, considering the material.

*** Guns of Honor (1994) Peter Edwards ~ Christopher Atkins, Todd Jensen, Gerard Christopher, James Van Helsen

I watched the 96 minute version that has absolutely nothing to do with the synopsis on the DVD box, nor the IMDB summary. But will agree that ostensible leads Jurgen Prochnow and Martin Sheen have minimal screen time. Third lead Corbin Bernsen playing an evil carpetbagger involved in forcing ranchers off their spreads post the Civil War does however show up. Another interesting aspect regarding the cast is that the female lead, playing a feisty character called Freda, isn't even mentioned in the IMDB cast lists. Neither for that matter does Bernsen's character's onscreen brother Jeb, who in the movie I saw is a prominent support character. So things definitely are a little odd and there certainly seems to be at least a couple of quite different versions of the film.

The one I saw was reasonably entertaining for western aficionados, though nothing special. The acting was pretty ordinary on the part of some of the cast members and the action sequences were also poorly choreographed and edited. There was little backgrounding of characters and viewers are asked to just assume a great deal. Having said that, unlike some of the other reviewers in this forum, I found the story I watched was quite easy to follow and worth a look for oater enthusiasts.

In post-Civil War Texas, Corbin Bernsen is a vicious carpetbagger who along with some nasty Union soldiers and the backing of the corrupt provincial government, are evicting ranchers from their property in a bogus property tax scheme and killing the ones that come close to making their payments.

Guns Of Honor is a modestly entertaining picture with decent production values and a likable cast headed by Christopher Atkins as an ex-Confederate, who along with his friends, battle Bernsen's bullies and try to save a young female rancher. Top billed Jurgen Prochnow and Martin Sheen appear in high-profile guest-starring roles.

This is not very memorable but it's easy to take, kind of like a fifties B-western but with a few splashes of blood and some gratuitous female nudity thrown in to push the rating from PG-13 to R!

This mess is the remainder from a cobbled miniseries of which most, thankfully, has been left in the can, as is apparent by the billing: Jurgen Prochnow (1st) has a half-dozen or so short lines and nearly no screen time, Martin Sheen (2nd) disappears completely early on, Corbin Bernsen (3rd) does not appear at all. The screenplay is based upon the novel "The Ysabel Kid" by a popular English novelist writing as J. T. Edson (whose historically inaccurate depictions of Western Americana were researched for the most part in his favourite pub), and is replete with incongruity of dialogue, often lapsing into late 20th century American urban slang, only one element that is in the molding of this grotesque item. After studying its first half, a viewer will feel completely befogged after the plentiful activity involving frantic gunplay, fist fighting, rape, illy-advised nudity, and gore galore, since there are few, if any, clues given as to what may be transpiring, eased but mildly by an action halting soliloquy delivered by the female lead that tugs from the proceedings some vague concept of the story's direction. The plot engages a group of Confederate soldiers, shortly after the end of the War Between The States, that is attempting to smuggle new Winchester rifles, bestowed by the United States government upon Mexican rebels warring against Emperor Maximilian's French troops, and additionally involves another set of ex-Confederates that is bent upon delivering documents of amnesty from Washington to the other Southerners so that all may return to the reunited Union and prepare to wage war with French invaders into Texas (a fantasy of novelist Edson). This is one of those films wherein every scene provides something to laugh at, groan over, or pity since even a script doctor might do little for a work that demands hospitalization, suffering from such maladies as erratic sound mixing, ragged stunt work, commercial fadeouts arranged for its television release, fragmented storylines, an energetic rescue from drowning in a turgid waist deep river, frequent silly twirling of pistols and inefficiently fanning of their hammers during gun battles, shifts in relationships without ostensible cause, an intense young Indian (Todd Jensen) swearing totemic reprisal for the murder of his father (quaint casting here with Jensen having the same degree of believability as a vengeful Indian as would Tab Hunter), foolish historic implausibilities, and a slew of other factors that insult the Western film genre.