Villa Rides (1968)

User Rating:

6.1/10   

Director:

Buzz Kulik

Writers:

Robert Towne (screenplay) and
Sam Peckinpah (screenplay) ...

Release Date:

20 September 1968 (West Germany)

Genre:

War | Western

Tagline:

Villa rages! Villa lusts! Villa kills! VILLA RIDES!

Plot:

Mexican rebel Pancho Villa lead a revolution helped by an American aviator imprisonned in Mexico.

Plot Keywords:

Pancho Villa | Mexico | Revolution | Mexican Revolution | Gunrunner

Cast

Yul Brynner	...	Pancho Villa
Robert Mitchum	...	Lee Arnold
Maria Grazia Buccella	...	Fina (as Grazia Buccella)
Charles Bronson	...	Rodolfo Fierro
Herbert Lom	...	Gen. Victoriano Huerta
Robert Viharo	...	Urbina
Frank Wolff	...	Ramirez
Alexander Knox	...	President Francisco Madero
Diana Lorys	...	Emilita
Bob Carricart	...	Don Luis
Fernando Rey	...	Fuentes
José María Prada	...	Major
Antonio Ruiz	...	Juan
Jill Ireland	...	Girl in restaurant
Regina de Julián	...	Lupita

Runtime:

USA:125 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color (Technicolor)

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

USA:R | West Germany:16 (f) | Finland:K-16 | Norway:16 | Sweden:15 | USA:Approved

Filming Locations:

El Casar de Talamanca, Guadalajara, Castilla-La Mancha, Spain

Company:

Paramount Pictures

Trivia:

This is the first movie where Charles Bronson appears with his trademark mustache.

Goofs:

Revealing mistakes: Obvious ropes due to flying hay in the wall scene.

Quotes:

Girl in restaurant: I want you to know that I've never been so humiliated in all my life. To leave me here, sitting alone... And in front of all El Paso!
Lee Arnold: Why don't you do me a favor, will you? Just shut up.
[to waiter]
Lee Arnold: May I have the check, please?

Good action, but Brynner is woefully miscast

Mexican bandit and revolutionary Pancho Villa has been portrayed in films before, most notably by Wallace Beery in 1934's "Viva Villa!". Beery bore an uncanny resemblance to the real Pancho Villa, and by all accounts his portrayal is historically quite accurate, although the movie itself isn't. While overall this film is better than Beery's, the miscasting of Yul Brynner as Villa is difficult to overcome, and Robert Mitchum's sleepwalking through his role as an American soldier of fortune caught up in the Mexican revolution doesn't help, either. The two best performances in the film are Charles Bronson as Villa's right-hand man and chief executioner Rodolfo Fierro (although Bronson accurately plays him as a man who can murder dozens of people with almost no thought about it, in real life Fierro was even more of a butcher than he is shown to be here, and is known to have personally murdered hundreds of people) and Herbert Lom as the ambitious, corrupt killer, Gen. Victoriano Huerta, and although Lom plays him as more of a sophisticated James Bond-ish Eurotrash villain than the semi-literate Indian that Huerta really was, he still does an effective job. The action setpieces are extremely well done and exciting, especially a rebel charge through a marsh against a heavily fortified federale position and, as has been previously mentioned, the film's soundtrack is truly outstanding. So even though Brynner may not be anyone's idea of Pancho Villa, the movie overall is worth a watch.