Benedito Dias Rodrigues I saw this picture for first time in 1992 with a low grade,right now seen that they made with the horses l stayed upset by such stupid suffering and cruelty,today this movie could not ever possible to be made in this way as did....Hachman who always was against any kind of violence in the movie make something about that....apart this brutality the movie has an original screenplay indeed,with nice landscape along the picture,some jokes from James Coburn and a great performance of Ben Johnson as an old man looking for glory...Candice Bergen already made a best performance in Blue Soldier that is infinitely better than this...anyway the movie is good but with will be honored by horse's blood!!

dougdoepke No need to recap the plot. Tracking a prize-money, cross-country horse race amounts to an unusual premise for a western. But the overall result is undermined by lengthy run-time, erratic character development, and an ill- advised plot twist. Writer Brooks had a big challenge trying to supply defining moments to the crowded field, and only partially manages. Too many racers are picked up and then dropped as the field narrows down to Clayton (Hackman) and Luke (Coburn).Still, the overall message is a strong one, especially as it involves that required staple of cowboy movies—the horse. Hackman's Clayton shows more regard for animal welfare than any oater I've seen, going all the way back to the tripwire when horses went head-over-heels in highly dramatic fashion. Of course, that produced broken horse legs and a lot of dead mounts, something the movie makers didn't tell us matinée kids. By and large, traditional oaters treated the critters as necessary props and nothing more. Then there's the dog-eat-dog world of racing competition where it's every man for himself. Of course, conventional productions often stressed the Darwinian world of the old West, where the lone hero faces down the bad guys. But here the narrative's upshot is the bonding among racers that challenges this movie convention. Such humane bonding moments also lend genuine poignancy to the narrative and account for much of the film's dramatic appeal. Then too, the script manages this with getting sappy about it. All in all, I take the movie as something of an anti-western with that as a subtext. Consider in the same vein, placing a girl (Bergen) among the racers, where she by and large holds her own. Too bad the story dilutes her presence with a twist that I guess introduces conventional gunplay into a narrative which already has enough action. Anyway, a girl competing against men amounts to another break with convention. Too bad this rather worthy movie effort doesn't produce a more memorable overall result.(In passing— Apparently, Paul Stewart's early important character {the gray-haired financier Parker} rather mysteriously disappears from the movie because of Stewart's sudden heart attack on location, IMDb.)

jfarms1956 This movie is geared for those 12and older. This movie is a modern day western, cowboys, hats, horses, and guns. Bite the Bullet is action packed. It even has a flavor of humor in the film (it is not just all serious). I was surprised to find that Gene Hackman was playing a cowboy (and doing it well). I am used to his modern day soldier or city slicker roles. James Coburn can play just about everything well. Candice Bergen is just eye candy for your guys. The musical scores are perfectly complementary with what is going on in the movie. It is a little long in places, but over all, the movie provides a night of good entertainment. I give it five thumbs up.

Bob_Zerunkel You don't have to see more than a few minutes of this movie to start picking out the plot holes. What a disaster.Bergen's character, for instance, enters the race, not to win, but because she knows that the race goes right near where her husband is in prison. She wants to break him out, and she wants to use the race to help her. Her plan is to do the race day after day until she runs across the chain gang that has her husband. Then she will overpower the guard and vamoose with the hubby.Stupid, stupid, stupid plan. But it works. She rides hundreds of miles at break-neck speed and wondrously comes upon the chain gang with her husband at the exact time she passes. She never has to deviate from the race course!! The chain gang is right in the path of the race!! There is only one guard!! She gets her husband out. Wow.Neither horses nor riders are outfitted for a marathon race. Horses are used like automobiles. As long as the rider can sit, the horse can keep galloping through the desert. However, get a horse near the finish line, and all of a sudden, it's about dead. Too bad the race didn't end 300 yards earlier when the horses were frisky.I absolutely love cowboy movies, and I like every actor in this movie, but this is a load of garbage.Perhaps it makes sense if you have never seen a horse or a desert or a race, but this is a stinker.Horses can't be run hour after hour. Deserts are both deadly hot and freezing cold. Marathon races are not done at full speed.Geeze, there was even bad acting by the snake. What the heck is that snake doing trying to snuggle up to a sleeping Vincent in the middle of a hot desert day? It was probably an amateur snake that had never been a snake before. A more professional snake would have argued with the director. Real snakes seek heat when it is cold and hide from it when it is hot. If they are out in the hot sun, they are hunting, and they don't hunt things larger than what they can shove down their throats whole.And finally, if you are ever in the desert and you and your horse are dying of thirst, you aren't a horseman if you drink before you take care of your horse.This is not a "fact-based" story as some gullibly believe. There was a race once that went the same distance, but that is the only connection.Hackman, Colburn, Bergen, Johnson, Vincent: fine actors. Anything they have done is more watchable than this turkey.This movie gets one cow plop out of ten. Great actors. No plot. Bad camera work. Badly edited.