100 Rifles

Judging by the plot this movie shows up as a pretty typical action western of the late sixties with revolution stuff leaning strongly on the messages of counterculture and the Vietnam era. Mostly it seems to ride somewhere between 'The Professionals' and 'The Wild Bunch' for its mood and action. A strong link through the story can also be made to Damiano Damiani's 'A Bullet for the General', an excellent spaghetti western with some political overtones. In '100 Rifles' one can forget the politics and concentrate on action. This is a very violent western but still surprisingly low on gore. A bit like in those older westerns, a lot of shooting and stabbing and whatever without gushing copious amounts of fake blood. Maybe that suits better here. We have seen enough Peckinpah imitations already.

The film takes full advantage of Raquel Welch's well working sex appeal. The hot love scene between her and Jim Brown was considered controversial at the time the movie came out. Now it's just two people making love and Welch really enjoying her work or being corny, judge yourself. Brown makes a highly likable hero and Reynolds in his before super-stardom state of career is also good as a halfbreed bandit with the familiar glint in the eye. At times I got the feeling he was lightly making fun of Marlon Brando's Zapata. That may be, because I recently saw on DVD an old episode of Sonny and Cher Show in which he was successfully aping Brando's Kowalski from 'A Streetcar Named Desire' and was so funny. So, an okay action western but nothing revolutionary in spite of the story subject.