Joe Kidd is a 1972 American Revisionist Western film starring Clint Eastwood and Robert Duvall, written by Elmore Leonard and directed by John Sturges.

The film is about an ex-bounty hunter hired by a wealthy landowner named Frank Harlan to track down Mexican revolutionary leader Luis Chama, who is fighting for land reform.

The posse moves ahead to intercept a train back to Sinola, while a lone shooter engages Kidd and his party; these are pinned down as Mingo, the best shot of Harlen's group, has a high-powered rifle and is firing from the rocks above.

Robert Duvall was cast as Frank Harlan, a ruthless landowner who hires Eastwood's character, a former frontier guide named Joe Kidd, to track down the culprits and scare them away.

[5] Eastwood was not in perfect health during the film, suffering from symptoms that suggested a bronchial infection, in addition to having several panic attacks, falsely reported in the media as his having an allergy to horses.

[6] During production, the script for the finale was altered when producer Robert Daley jokingly said that a train should crash through the barroom in the climax, and he was taken seriously by cast and crew, who thought it was a great idea.

Nothing remarkable, but modestly decent—a feeling that persists, with continually diminishing assurance, almost until the climax, when everything is thrown away in a flash of false theatrics, foolish symbolism and what I suspect is sloppy editing.

"[8] Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film two stars out of four and wrote: "All I can tell you about Clint Eastwood in Joe Kidd is that he plays a ruthless gunman of few words.

"[9] Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune awarded the same two-star grade and said: "Filled with all manner of inconsistencies, the Joe Kidd character is really a prop for a series of violent incidents, most of which are either lifted from other pictures or totally unbelievable.

"[10] Variety wrote: "Not enough identity is given Eastwood in a New Mexico land struggle in which no reason is apparent for his involvement, but John Sturges' direction of the Elmore Leonard screenplay is sufficiently compelling to keep guns popping and bodies falling.