The picture was based on the historic Beefsteak Raid of September 1864 led by Confederate Major General Wade Hampton III.

Kelly resists an offer of double the Union contract to help shanghai and deliver the stolen herd to Richmond, since Confederate money is worthless.

Kelly misdirects Rossiter’s guard by visiting a brothel, going to a private room with a prostitute and paying her to stay alone while he slips away through a window to meet with Pickering.

Keep fighting like this, looks like you’ll end up with one of everything.” Rossiter replies: “You seem to manage pretty well yourself, for a nine-fingered man.” The film was shot in the vicinity of Baton Rouge, Louisiana substituting for central Virginia and the Civil War battlefield areas around the Confederate and state capital of Richmond and Petersburg encircled and under siege in 1864.

Bosley Crowther of The New York Times remarked that it was "a good picture—nice and crisp and tough", praised the script writer Franklin Coen for "blueprinting a fresh idea, and salting it with some tingling, unstereotyped behavior and gristly dialogue".

He further praised the cinematography, the casting of Holden and Widmark, which he considered "sardonic perfection", and added that the "picture perks up beautifully in the ripely-detailed homestretch".

[3] Variety praised the action sequences with the cattle stampede but, unlike Crowther, thought there were some issues with the script which they believed "overdevelops some characters and situations, and underdevelops others".

The heroes, or antiheroes, of both films pursue selfish pecuniary ventures as a conscious alternative to becoming committed in a pointless destructive war".