leelacade

Wow! This is my kind of movie. Socially progressive motivation, Pakistan, contemporary Spaghetti Western...it's perfect! I really don't know what else to add. It was on UK Netflix, but I have not seen the DVD anywhere. lol If I hate a movie I can write forever about it but when it's really good like this one...that's about all I care to say. The score on here? Wow. Tough audience. You have to wonder about the accuracy of ratings that put it significantly below "Dumb and Dumber" or way below "Pulp Fiction". I think that last one indicates why there are so few really good movies coming out. If you can do crap and get a "9" on here, why do the hard yards, create a great film...for a 6.5? Such a sad, sad state of affairs, imho.

I was very disappointed with this series. He seems to only consider genres that are currently hyped as if that were the history of cinema. The most glaring example is nothing on Westerns. One can make a cogent argument for all movies being Westerns. The first frickin' movie was a Western. How can you leave that out of the history of cinema? The biggest stars of the 1950's all had to be in a Western. Romcoms? I don't think so.

Besides that he selects about 5 over hyped films and talks about them for an hour as if nothing else existed. Simple hypotheses from small data sets. And I found him very uninteresting personally and as a presenter. This is only the second BBC documentary series I have not liked in 22 years of watching the BBC.

Very straight ahead, I mainly liked the fact it was in Spanish with English subtitles. Good practice. I liked the cinematography and as main characters go, this one works well in the genre.

The only real groaner in this one is the unbelievably bad weapons management. I've met 12 year old that could have edited those scenes much better than were done. See "goofs". There's one of the most horrendous ones I've ever seen in the genre...to much to go into here. Actually, it's like a dozen impossibilities in the space of 15 seconds. Hire a decent gun wrangler!

I've 200 Spaghetti Westerns, so I watch a lot that most people would consider of borderline merit, so I'm very capable of overlooking production shortcuts for the sake of the bigger picture. I couldn't with this one. It wasn't so much awful as it was really incompetent.

Fred Williamson does well in the lead role...but he should stay away from script writing!!! Or at least hire a consultant that knows something about the period? Get a continuity editor? Learn some basic physics? Technically the history, physical possibility of a thing happening, etc., was actually as bad as Quentin Tarantino. Which is interesting because this is obviously the basis for Django Unchained, and it really shows what an idiot Tarantino is that he couldn't improve on this cow pat.

The errors are legion. Makes me rate Spaghetti Westerns higher. Ever the worst of the worst never make any of the glaring mistakes this one does. The worst has to be the attitude change in the female lead. When? Why? How? No. Just happens. 13 shots from two six shooters. People 200 yards behind a person they're chasing firing six shooters, some pointing up into the air, in what would simply have been a waste of ammunition. No one reloads even once in the movie. Dynamite 2 years before it was commercially available. Joshua looses hardware constantly...and then it's magically back in the next scene. And some stuff that is just so non-sensical and pointless that even Tarantino would cringe. Well, I guess not, because he remade it. The scene where the old outlaw dies. Besides what he did would take hours, it's just POINTLESS! Not to mention it spawns yet another continuity error in the following scene. You could write five pages on the continuity errors section of this page.

I gave it a 2 instead of a 1 because the scenery was nice, it was a western and Fred was OK. It is the first SW in my collection of 200 that I will not be archiving. Yep. First ever, watch and dump. Given my elastic tastes in the genre, that's really saying something.

This is our contemporary situation in a nutshell. People are meat that entertain you or they are worth nothing. See a woman degrading herself for you? Great. Just grab it.

I've always thought soccer was the most eloquent statement about the current odious state of the human condition, but this show might just have it beat. Again, though, like many Tarantino movies, this could be an useful screening device for new dates. Anyone that likes this is dead behind the eyes and sees you totally in terms of an object that can do things to satisfy them.

Purest narcissistic solipsism.

I'm a fan of Raul de Anda so I was excited to get a copy of one of his "Spaghetti Westerns". It was in Spanish, but the Spanish is so clear and perfect that voice to text recognition software did a fair job, that got ran through translation software, then I manually filled in the gaps listening to the Spanish. That actually doesn't require more than an intermediate level of Spanish- no where near fluency required.

That done, I sat down to watch it and had no problem following the plot. Superficially it's a revenge flick, as is common in the genre, with a well known pistolero mentoring a kid. In terms of the screenplay, though, it felt more like an Elmer Kelton novel, which is to say that it was much more mature and realistic than the screenplays you get in many euro-westerns. That and good cinematography and settings put it over the top for me, into the "better than your average Spaghetti Western". Some might not like it's relative lack of gore, but, like I said, the screenplay was much more mature and realistic. It has a lot to say socially, but is nowhere near being the morality plays that many Zapatista Spaghetti Westerns are. The ending is great, I thought, though some might disagree. That's where I really saw the similarity to Kelton. I certainly like those other ways of doing it, but I found this one to be a refreshingly different take on something where the formula really wasn't altered that much. Great directing and writing! Historically accurate. The conflict described went on a lot.

Oh, and Senor Anda appears in it as well. I thought Amadee Chabot was somewhat mis-cast, but that's a minor point of contention. When Miss California settles locally and says she wants to be in your picture, you say, "I think I can find a way to make that work", I guess.

"No matter what they say, it's all about money." That's the take home lesson from the movie. Romance? Epiphany? Falling in love? No, money. 1990, the beginning of the "Greed is Good" era. Reading the user reviews is really depressing. We're that far gone that people can see this as a Cinderella story. Having to work as a prostitute? Being paid to pretend to date someone? That's a love story? It is if you're a banal materialist. She got lotsa bling and things in the end. Happily ever after. What more is there to life anyway.

Nauseating. Thoroughly nauseating. The movie and the glowing reviews by the soulless lucre mongers stumbling through life.

The only thing scary about this movie is how gen Xers will fall into line and start marketing anything just as much as the person paid to do so will, and don't seem to be aware they're doing it. It really depends on that principle of self delusion. And self obsession. "I know I am FEELING SOMETHING...". So it must be real. Typical gen X solipsism. Someone that suggestible could actually work themselves into fear over...nothing. And they do, because you can see all the terrified ones that thought it was great. But if you don't create the delusion...well, you see the rest of the reviews. There's nothing there. They seem to recover though, if you look at the movie's ratings trend. Straight down to hades!

Vapid, irritating, unconvincing, illogical, amateurish film making at its very worst. Over hyped by the hype machine. Gobbled up by the gullible. Yeah, there's real horror here all right!

This is an example of the popular and dangerous trend to do "science by documentary" to get a theory directly in the public's eye, bypassing the peer review process. It encourages viewership and funding, regardless of the merits of the science. Just be sexy.

The title is accurate. It *is* an enigma. However, they completely fail to mention endemic syphilis, one of those nasty little complications they would have had to account for in a peer reviewed journal. Rather than going through the legion of problems with the science in the documentary.

This movie manages to pull off one of the rarest of feats- a sequel that's better than the original! The original was "El Zurdo" ("Lefty"), featuring a gunslinger that shoots a card sharp in self defense, takes pity on his young son, and takes him to place into a nice family.

In the sequel, the boy grows up, and is not exactly appreciative of Lefty's kind act. Lefty's one time fiancée raises him and she's left in a very awkward position frequently. The death of her husband and the predatory advances of the owner of a neighboring ranch doesn't help her situation.

I don't think it finishes as strong as all that could have led to, but it was still enjoyable and I was glad I saw it. Very limited release and good luck getting English subs; I had to do my own. If you know Spanish and like Spaghetti Westerns or Ranceros, I'd recommend it.

I really enjoyed this nice little "ranchero", mainly because it treats with accuracy and soberness the "gunslinger" tradition in traditional Westerns. It's like watching something written by Elmer Kelton or William W. Johnstone; very realistic and not at all romanticized.

Character development is very Spaghetti Western-ish with no clear heroes and villains except for the ones that are supposed to come off that way. Basically, the protagonist is just too good with his six- shooter. He develops a reputation, shoots a man in self-defense and is falsely convicted of murder on the testimony of a false witness and sent to prison.

There's an escape and he sets about evening the score with those who set him up and starts searching for his wife and son. From then on you see how he is a prisoner of his reputation and, it doesn't matter if you like it, hate it, want it, or don't care, that there's only one path ahead of you, and it isn't pleasant.

To say any more would be to spoil the plot, so I'll just conclude by saying that I like the way the drama plays out and really enjoyed the film, more than any "ranchero" that I've seen. VERY limited release, and I had to do my own subs; I would love to see this released with English subs on DVD. It's definitely one that I could imagine recommending to a lot of different kinds of people for a number of reasons.

I recently was able to snag subtitles for this and so finally got to see it with all the dialog complexity. It's a classic example of Mexico's answer to the Spaghetti Western, the Ranchero genre. It starts enough like a Spaghetti Western, being a revenge story. But that bit plays out rather quickly and the story revolves around a woman and her fiancé and the consequences of her incidental contact with the stranger that was seeking revenge.

Bottom line, if you've ever watched a Spaghetti Western and thought, "I'd like more character development and relationship intrigue and less action"- I'm going to assume that's happened at least once, though I can't imagine it- then this is your movie. Though the title tries to make it seem much more Spaghetti Western than it is. In English, it means, "Crosses Across the Wilderness".

Great images of Mexico, it's great with an enchilada dinner. If the above doesn't describe you, it's still watchable, imho.

I've never watched a movie that was so unremarkable. There's plenty of remarkable things in bad movies. Remarkable things in good movies. I gave this a "5" because it is so totally unremarkable. The screenplay is about as straight ahead as you can imagine. At 70 minutes it pretty much says what it's going to do and gets on with doing it. Very much 1962 production values. My print had washed out very badly.

There must be some comment you can make on this one's merit...but I can't think of it.

Why is this docu-film not better known?!? A very good documentary on the life of Francisco "Pancho" Villa, told by his son, daughter and people who fought with him. It's a priceless archive because of the age of the people involved, all first hand witnesses. It could be subtitled, "A Tour of Mexican Nursing Homes", and you wonder if anyone is going to fall over dead during the filming. That's important because you realize this was THE last chance to get so many eye-witness accounts of Villa's life.

In Spanish, my DVD had good English subtitles. Might be a bit dry for some, but I really liked it, has great mariachi style music, and as a historical record goes, it is simply priceless.

Thank you, Francesco Taboada Tabone, for making this!!!

This has to be humanity's low point. Not the movie, the people giving it glowing reviews. What a mindless crowd of 'bots parroting paid commercial hype about something that has NO STORY, NO WAR and NO PURPOSE other than making money off of total morons. The way people mindlessly react to marketing cues like trained poodles is disturbing in the extreme.

Could be useful as a first date movie or a new friend that you're not really sure about. Anyone that thinks this is a great movie is not worth associating with beyond what it takes for you to drive them home after the movie.

It's almost like English panto. The play isn't funny, everyone knows what will happen, and the audience reacts on cue with as stereotypical dialogue as the actors. Seriously, targeted at gen Y? Have millennials actually been raised to react like little 'bots to particular commercial stimuli? I fear so, for there is no other reason that someone would rave about this kind of big budget, Hollyweird CRAP!

And they need to be sued. The screen writing is so lazy as to be non- existent, and when they do come up with a character...it's a complete rip-off of Kurtz from Apocalypse Now. I can just hear the banter among the makers of this one. "Uh...he's a total rip-off of Kurtz." "Yeah, but just stick a goatee on him and it'll be OK".

And did I mention that it was boring to the point of torture? Slow? It's stops more often than a school bus, whilst running twice as slow. Even if you're totally marketing addled and wouldn't mind this, you will mind what you pay to see it. It's simply not worth it at any price. Free. If it were free and you're mindless...maybe. Otherwise, forget it!

I agree with the "great prep movie" comment from Saffron Walden. It's straight ahead and does just what it says on the tin.

Something is seriously wrong with the voting history on this one, particularly the four "1" votes. Those accounts never voted on anything else, and did not complete their profiles...at all. Look at the demographic break-down. All groups gave it a "10"...but the weighted average is 6.4. That can only happen if ALL four accounts were direct sign-ups, not through social media, and completed no profile information. In other words, those four are hit jobs.

Clean up the act, IMDb!. They must have all been from the same IP address too, as the person didn't bother to cover their tracks. Reliable- read, honest- ratings are what this site is about. You really need to raise your game in limiting malicious voting.

I saw the 2007 DVD re-release of this and the print is great and the subtitles are excellent.

It's a pretty obvious, "Hey, Why isn't Mexico producing Spaghetti Westerns?" take, but I think it works. It's a bit kitsch in its imitations in some ways, but the character development is actually better than the average SW, and so, I think it works.

The protagonist is much more complicated than the usual fare, and that works. Gunplay is OK; I think fans of the genre will want to see this. Well worth owning, IMHO.

Another line.

Another line.

...as long as you know it's a "B" slasher movie. If you don't know anything about cricket, I doubt you'll like it. But if you know as much as the average Aussie- and that's why the Ozploitation works- then it's pretty funny. Every piece of cricket kit is exploited to great effect. Lots of cricket jargon; it doesn't come off as pedantic or elitist, it just uses all those odd images to do something very cricket. In a B slasher movie. Isn't that worth the price of admission? If you're a cricket nutter it is!

It never gets above its station. And if you want a scary B-movie for your date, well, you might just bowl a maiden over! And if you didn't get that last joke, you probably won't like the movie. A solid 6/10 in my book. As to the negative reviews, I can see how if you knew little or nothing about cricket how it would be a real yawn.

The copy I watched of this movie was dubbed with English, from an original VHS tape. I'm not aware of any other releases except the originals. If you like poliziotteschi movies, this one is worth checking out. If you can find it, of course. I think this print really needs to be cleaned up and re-released. It's worth it.

One on level La Padrina (original title, means, basically, "The Godmother") is very typical. It's very typical of the '70s, very typical of poliziotteschi, and pretty typical for an Euro-mafia movie. With the exception of very '70s, it's also different than those things. It's at a much slower pace than a typical poliziotteschi, though I didn't find that onerous. Typical for the scenes in Sicily, there is a strong Syracuse element rather than being purely Palermo orientated. Typical of mafiosi movies, the protagonist plays a very different role. Typical of an Italian '60s-'70s movie, it's a poliziotteschi with Anthony Steffan, rather than a Spaghetti Western. While there's nothing really outstanding about it, it's a solid, straight ahead poliziotteschi. Personally I would put it in the top tier of the sub-genre, though. My criterion for that is simple. Middle tier is for movies that are good, but you'd probably have to be a fan of the genre to like. Top tier are movies that people that aren't fans of the genre would probably like as well. I think it meets the latter criterion.

Food pairing suggestion: homemade pizza with a nice, unpretentious Cabernet. It was a great lunch combo!

Once again we have the phenomenon of Tennessee QT ripping off classic outside-Hollywood '60s and '70s fare, copying the superficial elements, and failing to deliver any kind of meaningful context. Hey, dude, there was a reason it worked in the first place. But, no, his acolytes will attend this latest black mass and congratulate each other on all the vacuous references they can recognize.

This is a total rip-off of La Mala Ordina. The only thing he adds is some dialog between the hit men. He should've left it out if that's the best he can do.

His biography should be out soon. If truly titled, it would be, "A Typical Redneck Tries Art-house". Sound pretty awful? Well, the movie is worse.

I think this one is rated too low at 5.1. It's not nearly that bad. I agree with the comments that say that a lot comes down to what you expect from it. It's got enough SW chops to be called one of the genre. As to what it is best described as... It struck me that it's basically a Spaghetti Western version of a Shakespearean comedy.

Yeah, that's hard to explain without spoilers, so, I say, watch it! There is a new release in 2016 on DVD that is dubbed and has Italian subs. I'd prefer it the other way around, but this is odd enough that it might be better to not be reading the subtitles.

The minimum line requirement on these reviews is VERY tedious. Ever heard that brevity is the soul of wit? Guess not.

I'm a docu-junky and I have never once failed to watch one that was on the BBC, nor have I ever failed to enjoy what I watched. Actually, that Brian Cox series where he took 15 minutes to say that an hour is 60 minutes, a day 24 hours and a year 365.249 days was the only case in 25 years of my not being able to stomach what was on. I suppose this one is worse because I watched the whole thing. That's an hour I'll never get back or get any use out of!

What complete and utter rubbish! I'd say "tosh" but that wouldn't be fair to tosh. It could have been turned into a comedy, I guess. "Is your martial arts as good as a Chinese 6 year old?" The presenter would have to say, "No.". Why was this made? The guy that's the main focus comes off as a shallow, pretentious git. And a very irritating git at that. They never do anything worth watching at the monestary- it's barely a part of it at all. The meeting with the master at the end is like those summit meeting "brush-by" things that unimportant dignitaries get when a head of state visits. Maybe it should be called, "What we did when we couldn't film 'The Path to Shaolin'". It really has the look and feel of, "Damn. We're over here and don't have a thing to shoot. Uh...let's find something. Anything kind of gung fu will do".

The most irritating thing, after the main character's personality, is that they'll finally come down to brass tacks, ask a question...and then there's major hand-waving, lots of flowery words...but no answer.

Let me put it this way. If Quentin Tarantino made a serious, BBC documentary, this would be it. And that might explain why anyone would make it. There's a market for that kind of... Better stop. Impossible to continue without a lot of expletives.