Tuesday, December 31, 2019

Movie Review - "Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia" (1974)



"Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia" opens with a powerful Mexican crime lord putting a $1 million bounty on the head of our titular character and seemingly the entire crime world getting in on this. You would then think this would lead to many shootouts of one man against thousands while trying to bring down the crime world, or many terrible people trying to hunt one man who might have been wrongfully accused of a crime he didn't commit. But if "Alfredo Garcia" does one thing better than anything, it is subverting expectations.

Rather than a loud, epic gangster showdown, we get a quiet, leisurely western about a bartender (Warren Oates) falling in love while trying to hunt down a man who never fully know. In that regard, the film is servicable, Oates performs well as a man slowly learning what really matters in a world that is so quick to discard him. But given that this is a Sam Peckinpah film about a worldwide manhunt, I'd be lying if I said I wasn't a little disappointed. "Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia" does leave a lot to be desired, even as a reflective neo-western.

Final Grade: C
 

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