Rio Conchos
May. 14th, 2023 08:51 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
poliphiloThis is a movie set in an actual red desert. Red, red, red.
The desert is someplace in Utah pretending to be Mexico- and why not?
It stars Richard Boone- who doesn't quite have the presence to carry a movie and Stuart Whitman whose role is underwritten to the point where it no longer matters whether he has presence or not.
It is remarkably brutal for 1964. It kicks off with Boone's character murdering the members of an Apache funeral party- and carries on from there.
Edmund O'Brien has a juicy role as a loony confederate general. He is fat, he is bearded, he has a rich deep voice, he smokes cigars. He is essentially pretending to be Orson Welles.
(Which leads one to wonder whether Orson had been offered the cameo and turned it down.)
If the central characters had been more in focus and the direction stronger it could even have been one of the great westerns.
It looks back to the Searchers, it looks forward to the Wild Bunch.
The desert is someplace in Utah pretending to be Mexico- and why not?
It stars Richard Boone- who doesn't quite have the presence to carry a movie and Stuart Whitman whose role is underwritten to the point where it no longer matters whether he has presence or not.
It is remarkably brutal for 1964. It kicks off with Boone's character murdering the members of an Apache funeral party- and carries on from there.
Edmund O'Brien has a juicy role as a loony confederate general. He is fat, he is bearded, he has a rich deep voice, he smokes cigars. He is essentially pretending to be Orson Welles.
(Which leads one to wonder whether Orson had been offered the cameo and turned it down.)
If the central characters had been more in focus and the direction stronger it could even have been one of the great westerns.
It looks back to the Searchers, it looks forward to the Wild Bunch.
