Unusual subject matter and an ebulliently hammy performance by Yul Brynner (The Ultimate Warrior) keep this otherwise disappointing historical epic afloat.
    Eastern Europe, the 16th Century... The Kingdom of Poland, joining forces with the Cossack horsemen of the Ukrainian steppe, defeats and drives back an invading army of Ottoman Turks. The campaign has barely ended when the arrogant Polish commander, Prince Grigory (Guy Rolfe), orders artillery to bombard his own allies in a naked act of betrayal. Poland's king wishes to establish hegemony over the breadbasket of the Ukraine and the fiercely independent Cossacks — their contribution to the victory over the Turks notwithstanding — will just have to accept his rule. Having none of this is Taras Bulba (Brynner), colonel of the Oumanksy Cossack regiment, who emphatically declares his outrage by cutting off Prince Grigory's right hand with a saber. He and most of the Cossack Brotherhood escape the Polish trap and disperse, melting into the vast open countryside of the steppes. Taras vows to have his revenge against the backstabbing Poles even if he must patiently wait twenty years.
    Which is exactly what he does. Living as a farmer, Taras raises two strapping sons of which he's immensely proud: Andrei (Tony Curtis) and Ostap (Perry Lopez). He teaches them to despise and never trust the Poles. Thus the boys are puzzled when one day Papa announces he's sending them to Kiev to attend university. As a conciliatory gesture, the Polish crown has opened higher education to prominent Cossack families and Taras wants his sons to take full advantage. His wish is not for their intellectual enlightenment, however. He advises Andrei and Ostap to learn everything they can about the Poles and their way of thinking, so that when the time comes to fight them the Cossacks can use this knowledge in their struggle for freedom.
    The brothers travel to Kiev to begin their studies, where almost immediately — purely on sight — Andrei falls head over heels for a beautiful noblewoman, Lady Natalia (Christine Kaufmann), daughter of the city's Polish governor. So besotted is Andrei that he willingly endures the floggings meted out for cutting class; any punishment is worth it just for another glimpse of her. Eventually he's able to meet Natalia and, despite his lowly station as a Cossack rube, successfully woo her in secret. But their storybook romance is ultimately doomed. Natalia's brother finds out and has Andrei harshly beaten for even daring to look at a Polish woman of noble birth, much less touch one. He's about to have Andrei castrated (implied, not explicitly stated) when Ostap runs him through with a sword, killing him. Fugitives, the Bulba boys flee Kiev post-haste, returning to the family farmstead on the steppe. Everything Taras taught them would seem to have been reinforced by their experiences, which leave them hating the Poles even more — although Andrei cannot forget his lady love. He pines for her intensely, even as he rejoins the Cossack community at his father's side.
    That community of tribes — the Zaporozhtsi Brotherhood — has not gathered as an army since the Polish betrayal two decades before. Now the long-stilled call to arms is made once again, as Poland appeals to them to join in a campaign against the Baltic princes. Adventure and the prospect of booty are temptation enough for many Cossacks, who are prepared to overlook the past for a chance to saddle up for war. Not Taras Bulba, who brings his loyal regiment to the assembly with a different purpose in mind. He proposes attacking the Poles instead of fighting for them. ("There's only one way to keep faith with a Pole. Put your faith in your sword and the sword in the Pole!") Under his leadership the Cossack horde will march on the citadel of Dubno, where old enemy Prince Girgory is in command and the Lady Natalia now resides...
    I suppose this big budget misfire was an attempt to replicate the magic of 1958's The Vikings, another epic adventure film pairing a miscast Tony Curtis with a larger than life, scenery chewing co-star. Yul Brynner simply owns this movie (despite being second billed) and it suffers whenever he's offscreen. Chest thrust out, arms akimbo, voice bellowing lustily in that distinctive accent, Brynner dominates everything he shares the frame with, whether it's his fellow actors or the majestic vistas of seemingly boundless steppe country. (The rolling plains of Argentina prove a grand substitute for the Ukraine.) He throws himself completely into the role, using his outsize theatrics to bring the Cossack warlord — one of the "devils with scalplocks" — fully to life. Beyond Sam Wanamaker, as a fellow regiment commander (who appears in only a handful of scenes), the other players don't leave much of an impression in comparison. Curtis gives a good performance despite being a tad old for the part of Andrei, but I just couldn't buy his casting... He always looks like he could've dropped in from Rat Pack-era Vegas regardless of what costume he's wearing. (Ironically, Curtis is of Eastern European lineage in real life.) Christine Kaufmann's Natalia is just a two-dimensional cypher, a cardboard character from the most clichéd of tragic romance pulps. Her star-crossed relationship with Curtis is wholly unbelievable — the lovers exchange maybe ten sentences of dialog, tops — and staged in irritatingly saccharine fashion. This romantic subplot is a necessary element of the story (based on the novel by Nikolai Gogol) but, as presented here, it's a millstone around the film's neck.
    Director J. Lee Thompson helmed a pair of genuine classics in his time (The Guns of Navarone and the original Cape Fear) only to close out his career making really bad Charles Bronson movies in the 1980s. To my mind Taras Bulba falls somewhere in between in terms of quality. Only two scenes in the film are truly memorable: the great gathering of the Cossack horde, a sequence requiring hundreds of mounted extras (it'd be done with CG today), and the final meeting between Taras and Andrei, which is the one moment of any emotional resonance. Otherwise the film is hamstrung by standard-issue battles (lots of guys and horses milling about aimlessly, noticeably pretending to be fighting), occasionally laughable special effects and the aforementioned sappy romance. Taken as a whole, Taras Bulba is so old fashioned that it often creaks like a saddle in desperate need of oiling. Reinforcing this feel is the score by composer Franz Waxman (Bride of Frankenstein), which, while certainly dynamic and evocative of its subject, nonethless sounds like it belongs in a film made 20 or 30 years earlier. Only Brynner's gregarious performance truly makes this pic worth watching, unless you're intrigued by the rarity of an English-language movie about Ukrainian Cossacks (and happen not to be Polish).