Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia
by Sam Peckinpah
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Gig Young, Helmut Dantine, Isela Vega, Robert Webber, Warren OatesDirector: Sam Peckinpah
Brand: Sony
Producer: Helmut Dantine
Cinematographer: Álex Phillips Jr.
Writer: Sam Peckinpah
Producer: Gordon T. Dawson
Writer: Gordon T. Dawson
Producer: Martin Baum
Writer: Frank Kowalski
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); English (Original Language); Spanish (Original Language)
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, DVD, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.85:1
Running Time: 112 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2005-03-22
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Studio: MGM (Video & DVD)
Movie Reviews of Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia
Movie Review: A search for dignity, simple dignity....
Summary: 5 Stars
SPOILERS....
At first, many will rent this film based on its title. It has one of the greatest titles in movie history. It sounds like a crass, exploitation film from the 1970's. It may have been made in 1974, but it is not exploitation, nowhere near it. It's actually a violent, moving, deep, and dare I say, spiritual film. There's something so strange, yet so serene, about this film.
You see Benny (brilliantly played by Warren Oates) playing in a bar in Mexico, entertaining drunk, obnoxious American tourists. In walks in 2 hitmen (Robert Weber and Gig Young) who are looking for Alfredo Garcia, a gigolo who knocked up the daughter of a Mexican don (played by Emilio Fernandez, a director himself and who starred in several Peckinpah films). The 2 hitmen tell Benny to come to a hotel where he'll be given instructions. There Benny finds out about Alfredo Garcia, and starts off on his quest to "bring back the head of Alfredo Garcia". Benny hunts Alfredo down for the duration of the film, "finds" him, and ends up becoming friends with the head of Alfredo Garcia. Benny is generally what people call a loser (when he goes to the hotel where the hitmen are, he is openly mocked and one of them even calls him a loser), a man who hasn't had too many breaks in his life, who sees life from the bottom usually, and he feels finding Alfredo's head is his last shot. Oates is so good here that you feel something for him, you identify with him. Everyone (and I mean everyone) has been down in the gutter at one time or another. When Benny does find Alfredo, he's already dead. Benny descrecrates the grave, chopping his head off, and taking it back to El Jefe. In the meantime, he loses his girlfriend whore/wife, is nearly buried alive, and has to kill the 2 hit men who hired him in the first place. He begins to feel a kinship to Alfredo, and realises that Alfredo isn't his enemy, it's the bastards who hired him, so instead of just selling out for a payday, he takes the real scumbags out. He goes out in a hail of bullets, but still makes his point known to everyone.
This can almost be seen (forgive me if I sound pretentious) as a spiritual quest. Benny's soul is tested. He's had all this s*** thrown at him, and now he's still being tested. The world never lets up on you. It's always there in some way or another. You feel like you're a f***ing pawn most of the time, and you feel like Job, and you act out like Job. Here, I personally feel for Benny big time. This film is probably Peckinpah's greatest. It's one of the most unique, misunderstood, and powerful films ever made, and it should be better known. Peckinpah was really on his downward slide by this time (he only made a few more films, only one of which, Cross of Iron, was like the old Sam). He was a drunk and a cokehead, and his constant battle with producers and studios (sometimes the result of his drug problems, but sometimes because studio heads were fools at the time) had worn him down into a shell of a man. He died very young at 59 in the mid 80's. A real shame, but here in this film you see Sam for what he was. A very complex man, and a very complex film.
Summary of Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia
Some people will do anything for a million dollars even if it means killing anyone who gets in their way! Written and directed by OscarÂ(r) nominee* Sam Peckinpah and starring Academy AwardÂ(r) winner** Gig Young, Warren Oates, Robert Webber, Kris Kristofferson and the seductively beautiful Isela Vega, Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia is a gritty classic that vibrates with explosive action and nail-biting tension. When a Mexican land baron puts a million dollars on the head of the man who seduced his daughter, two money-hungry men (Young and Webber) recruita small-town bartender (Oates) to help them do their dirty work. But their tequila-fueled trek across the desolate Mexican frontier grows more intense, gruesome and bloody with every savage murder they leave in their wake! *1969: Original Screenplay, The Wild Bunch (With Walon Greenand Roy N. Sickner) **1969: Supporting Actor, They Shoot Horses, Don't They?Similar DVD Movies
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