Shoot the Sun Down (1978)

The story opens with some background.  It is 1836 and the area around Santa Fe is dominated by Navajo and Apache, who are killing each other as well as settlers.  The towns in the area are dominated by corrupt Mexican soldiers.  However, Americans are proving to be successful traders.  It so happens that three groups arrive in Santa Fe.  There is the captain (Bo Brundin) and his woman (Margot Kidder).  She puts on the airs of a lady while he claims to be a former ship's captain who now hopes to earn money by trading with the Indians.  There is scalphunter (Geoffrey Lewis) and his three underlings: Angel, Conquistador, and Delaware.  He claims to hunt buffalo, but is really - as his name exposes - a scalp hunter.  The Mexican government pays for Indian scalps and he's eager to collect.  Lastly, Mr. Rainbow (Christopher Walken) is on his way to Texas to join the revolution.  Unusually, he is armed with a revolver, which is a new invention at the time.

As the principal characters interact, motivations are exposed.  Most importantly, the captain has a treasure map and a nugget of gold to go with it.  Scalphunter wants to steal the gold for himself.  The woman is not the lady she pretends to be.  Mr. Rainbow is a deserter because he got tired of slaughtering Indians for the army.  This explains why he saved a Navajo (A Martinez) from a well-deserved beating by a bunch of men he was cheating at dice.  From Santa Fe, the principals soon find themselves at an abandoned village where they must work together against marauding Apache.

Regarding the setting, it gets some things right and others wrong.

• The Patterson Revolver was first available for sale in late 1836.  Mr. Rainbow is indeed carrying around a Patterson, which impressed me.  However, the gun only fired 5 shots though it is shown firing 6.  Also, it was a single-action revolver, meaning the hammer needed to be manually cocked before you can pull the trigger.  Therefore, his opening gunfight with the trio of bandits was incorrect.
• Mr. Rainbow claims to be coming from San Francisco.  There is no San Francisco in 1836.  It was called Yerba Buena.  However, he may mean San Francisco Bay.
• California was also in rebellion during this time, but that came to nothing.  Mr. Rainbow is therefore accurate in this observation.
• Jefferson Davis was never a captain.  He resigned from the US Army in 1835 as a First Lieutenant.  During the Mexican-American War, he raised a volunteer regiment - the Mississippi Rifles - and was its colonel.
• Indentured servitude was still legal, though it had largely been replaced by slavery in North America.
• One of scalphunter's goons called Mr. Rainbow a Gringo.  The term has not yet been invented.  It was coined during the Mexican-American War (1846-48).
• Scalphunter's goons are playing rock-paper-scissors.  This is a Japanese game that didn't migrate to the West until the 20th Century.
• Sunbearer is using a modern bow rather than an authentic Navajo bow.
• The Mexican government really did offer bounties for Indian scalps.
• The Golden Wheel of Montezuma would be immovable with the people on hand.  It looked to be at least 4 feet in diameter and at least 6 inches thick.  If it were pure gold, it would weigh 15 tons or so.  That rope they used to lower it onto the wagon was laughable.
• The Journey of Death - a noted stretch of desert in New Mexico - appears in the film.  While the characters are passing through, they are said to be within 3 days of Santa Fe.  Socorro - the nearest point of the Journey - is 140 miles from Santa Fe.  A wagon might go 25 miles in a day.
• Mr. Rainbow states he is going to Fort Alamo in Texas, painting the impression that he will be one of the defenders who dies there.  It is 700 miles from Santa Fe to San Antonio.  He cannot arrive in time for the Battle of the Alamo.  Besides, his gun was unavailable during the battle (Feb-Mar 1836).  This may just be a case that his news is old and he will arrive long after the Texas Revolution has been won.

There is plenty of potential in the story, but it is poorly handled.  There is a lot of talk, but not so much action.  This is a slow-moving western.  Though most of the cast is fine, Christopher Walken was a strange choice.  He doesn't have that hard-as-nails loner quality to him.  He looks much too boyish for a man who has seen too much killing.

Mediocre.