Burt Lancaster's crystal clear blue eyes is but one, but the most obvious reason I can't take Valdez Is Coming all too seriously. Burt's given some great performances, but can't overcome his Anglo looks and a heavy handed script.
Lancaster plays Bob Valdez, the Valdez who's coming in the title role. He's a Mexican-American sheriff who because of some trigger happy men in a posse is forced to kill a black man recently discharged from the cavalry with an Indian wife now left a widow.
The leader of the posse is rich rancher Jon Cypher who organized the manhunt on the say so of Susan Clark, the widow of a man this black trooper supposedly killed. Not that Cypher is terribly upset about the mistake. He's got a low opinion of people of color.
But when Lancaster just asks him for a decent amount of money for the widow, Cypher goes into a rage because no people who aren't white are going to tell him what to do. He fixes a kind of cross and ties Lancaster to it and sends him out on the desert. The mockery of the Catholic religion isn't lost on the Mexican populace.
It's more than not lost on us, we the audience get hit on the head with it. When Lancaster gets loose, he goes Rambo on Cypher and his men. It's a lot of blood and guts after that, worthy indeed of any Sylvester Stallone film.
According to a recent biography of Burt Lancaster, what Lancaster was trying to do was show the Mexicans as decent folks for the screen. His accent is passable, but why didn't they get the man some contact lenses to change that blue eye color is beyond me. And that religious symbolism was just a bit too much.
Still when the action gets going, it doesn't let up. Those sequences are the best part of Valdez Is Coming. It's not Burt Lancaster's best venture in the west though.
Lancaster plays Bob Valdez, the Valdez who's coming in the title role. He's a Mexican-American sheriff who because of some trigger happy men in a posse is forced to kill a black man recently discharged from the cavalry with an Indian wife now left a widow.
The leader of the posse is rich rancher Jon Cypher who organized the manhunt on the say so of Susan Clark, the widow of a man this black trooper supposedly killed. Not that Cypher is terribly upset about the mistake. He's got a low opinion of people of color.
But when Lancaster just asks him for a decent amount of money for the widow, Cypher goes into a rage because no people who aren't white are going to tell him what to do. He fixes a kind of cross and ties Lancaster to it and sends him out on the desert. The mockery of the Catholic religion isn't lost on the Mexican populace.
It's more than not lost on us, we the audience get hit on the head with it. When Lancaster gets loose, he goes Rambo on Cypher and his men. It's a lot of blood and guts after that, worthy indeed of any Sylvester Stallone film.
According to a recent biography of Burt Lancaster, what Lancaster was trying to do was show the Mexicans as decent folks for the screen. His accent is passable, but why didn't they get the man some contact lenses to change that blue eye color is beyond me. And that religious symbolism was just a bit too much.
Still when the action gets going, it doesn't let up. Those sequences are the best part of Valdez Is Coming. It's not Burt Lancaster's best venture in the west though.