[The last quarter of Major Dundee] may be cut to ribbons, but the first ninety minutes are magnificient.

The theme takes up and elaborates the conflict of Guns in the Afternoon, where two old comrades find themselves in a situation which revives and tests old loyalties….

Despite the cuts which thin out the final stages of the story,… the film is a fascinating study in the swing of a pendulum. For all his air of authority and decision, everything Dundee touches goes subtly wrong…. As Dundee sinks lower and lower into self-distrust, so Tyreen rises; not because of a change of character—he remains perfectly consistent from his first sullen arrogance in prison to the final absurd gallantry of his single-handed charge against a French cavalry troop—but because he gains a kind of moral ascendancy….

This theme is developed with a sweeping subtlety—broad strokes concealing the...