Lane is a drifting man in the Wild West, with a gang of several war buddies and some new hires, including a young man he managed to get out of a life of crime. Mrs. Lowe is a woman who tells of a husband who was part of a gang of ten robbers who stole $500,000 from a train years ago, and the husband and two others were killed, but not before hiding the gold in Mexico. Lane and company go with Lowe through wild lands to Mexico, with another gang of horsemen in pursuit-plus a mysterious well-dressed man who follows everyone else.The movie has an unusually low amount of violence and shooting, but most of all a logical but shocking twist at the end. I won't give it away. See the movie.

It's a light-hearted nonsensical Western in which Wayne leads four old buddies and Ann-Margret in search of half a million dollars in buried gold, robbed from Wells Fargo by her now-dead outlaw husband. Her intention: to return it to the bank, clear her name, and give the sizable reward to Wayne's gang.It was written and directed by Burt Kennedy, who did the scripts for Randolph Scott's more memorable Westerns. There were spots in which the dialog became positively lyrical in a vernacular kind of way. "Ma'am, if you was my woman I'd of come for you even if I'd a died in the doin' of it." It takes a peculiar talent to dream up lines like that.They're not absent from "The Train Robbers" although they don't reach the dazzling heights of Scott's westerns from ten years earlier. Off by themselves in the desert at night, lit only by a distant camp fire, Ann-Margaret gets sort of quietly hormonal with Wayne and tells him that when this is all over, he might want to stop by her house. "Ma'am, I've got a saddle that's older'n you are." Wayne had done a startling thing is playing an old curmudgeon in "True Grit" a few years earlier. It was truly a good performance. But it was a character role and Wayne couldn't seem to bring himself to continue along that line. And this movie represents one of a half dozen or so of increasingly dull Western standards, with Wayne in his leather vest, exercising common sense, being brave and authoritative. At the very end, he pulled himself out of that commercial slump and did very nicely in his last work, "The Shootist." He gets decent support here from Rod Taylor, Christopher George, and Wayne's old working partner, the always reliable and always relaxed Ben Johnson, the actor not the playwright.Except for a few scenes -- one quasi-romantic and one a discussion of aging -- it's pretty routine, almost adolescent. "Should we rob another train?" "Ain't nothing' else to do." That kind of thing. But it's diverting enough and William Clothier's photography of the cactus-studded desert of Durango, Mexico, is colorful, picturesque. Makes you kinda . . . wanna . . . live there.

This is another old John Wayne classic that, despite being a bit of an oldie, is still so much fun to watch. Being made as late as 1973 it is one of the later works of John Wayne. I quite like these later works where he is often playing a grumpy old hero.This movie is a good classical old western with a decent enough chunk of humor. It starts off fairly hilarious when Lane punches his friend for bringing a guy along who "could not take orders". The continued muttering and bickering between Lane and his two old war-buddies is one of the things that makes this movie so fun to watch.The story is a fairly simple one. A widow of a bank robber hires Lane and his friends to track down half a million in gold that said widow's husband stole and hid. Naturally there are other parties searching for the gold. The entire movie centers around Lane & Co though with the other parties just being kind of "around" which is perhaps a bit unusual. Apart from a few close-ups of a Pinkerton agent played by Ricardo Montalban (who of course will always be Khan for us sci-fi fans) and who has no major part to play until the end, we never really see the bad guys in any detail. They are just a bunch of men on horses riding over the country side or shooting at our heroes.As is often the case with American western movies the landscape and scenery is also a contributing factor to the enjoyment of the movie. The choice of the abandoned train wreck in the desert was an interesting, a bit unusual, and visually pleasing one. I have to say that the "town" where the train arrived with Lane and where the final fight took place was a wee bit disappointing though.It looked like three scattered houses and a water tower.The ending was just as hilarious as the beginning. Actually more so. I just loved it when Lane rode after the train and in answer to his friends question explained that he was going to rob a train.This was some very enjoyable 90 minutes indeed.

"The Train Robbers" features a lot of horses, and a lot of people on horses chasing other people on horses. It also has a lot of gorgeous western style scenery - in all honesty some of the best sceneries I've come across. It also has a pretty solid cast - headed up by John Wayne and Ann-Margret and including folks like Rod Taylor and Ricardo Montalban. Even the story, I suppose, isn't too bad in that it could have been a lot more interesting than it turned out to be. Ann-Margret is Mrs. Lowe, a widow who wants to find a stash of gold stolen by her husband and return it to its rightful owners, thus clearing him. John Wayne is Lane - the head of the crew she hires to help her out on the quest. But the execution of the story doesn't work.There's too many chases. There's not enough excitement. There's too many inane conversations depicted. We have a couple of old cowboys talking to each other about getting old. There's John Wayne talking to a young cowboy about growing up. Mrs. Lowe seems to make a play for Lane only to be told "I've got saddles older than you." Probably true enough. Yes, the dialogue is less than riveting much of the time. I do give it a bit of credit for an unexpected and somewhat amusing twist at the very end that I did not see coming. But really, it leaves a lot to be desired. (2/10)