A Time for Killing

During the final days of the American Civil War, a group of Confederate prisoners escapes from a Union stockade and makes for the Mexican border. On the way they kill a Union courier carrying word that the war has ended. The Confederate captain keeps the news from his men and pushes on, while a Union officer who reluctantly leads the pursuit remains equally unaware that the fighting is already over. The two sides collide without knowing the conflict has been settled.

Phil Karlson directed this 1967 war western from a screenplay by Halsted Welles, with Harry Joe Brown producing for Columbia Pictures. Karlson had come off The Silencers the year before; The Wrecking Crew followed in 1968. Glenn Ford plays Major Tom Wolcott, with George Hamilton as Captain Dorrit Bentley, Inger Stevens as Emily Biddle, and Paul Petersen, Todd Armstrong and Max Baer Jr. in support, part of a credited cast of twenty. The film runs 88 minutes on a budget of about 2 million dollars.

Audience response has been modest: on IMDb it holds 5.4 out of 10 across roughly 1,200 votes, and on TMDB 4.8 out of 10 from a much smaller sample of 37.