Villa Rides
| Villa Rides | |
|---|---|
Theatrical release poster
|
|
| Directed by | Buzz Kulik |
| Produced by | Ted Richmond |
| Screenplay by |
Robert Towne Sam Peckinpah |
| Story by | William Douglas Lansford |
| Starring |
Yul Brynner Robert Mitchum Charles Bronson |
| Music by | Maurice Jarre |
| Cinematography | Jack Hildyard |
| Edited by | David Bretherton |
| Distributed by | Paramount Pictures |
|
Release date
|
|
|
Running time
|
125 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Box office | $1,200,000 (US/ Canada) |
Villa Rides is a 1968 American western war film starring Yul Brynner in toupee in the title role and Robert Mitchum as an American adventurer and pilot of fortune. The supporting cast includes Charles Bronson as Fierro, Herbert Lom as Huerta, and Alexander Knox as Madero. Sam Peckinpah wrote the original script and was set to direct but Brynner didn't like his depiction of Villa as cruel and had Robert Towne rewrite the script and sought another director. The screenplay is based on the biography by William Douglas Lansford.
Film critic for the Chicago Sun-Times, Roger Ebert, gave the film a mixed review, writing, "You would think an interesting picture could be made about Pancho Villa and the Mexican Revolution, a subject most Americans know next to nothing about. But we learn nothing except that Pancho was a romantic fellow who had a mustache and liked to have people lined up three in a row and killed with one bullet. (That scene, incidentally, got a big laugh.) Frankly, this kind of movie is beginning to get to me. You can enjoy one, maybe, or two. Or you can enjoy a particularly well done shoot-em-up. But the Loop has been filled with one action-adventure after another for the last month, and if Villa Rides is not the worst, it is certainly not the best."
Film critic A. H. Weiler wrote, "Yul Brynner, Robert Mitchum, cavalry, politicos and even the faint strains of "La Cucaracha" fail to disguise the fact that Villa Rides which dashed into the Forum Theater yesterday, is simply a sprawling Western and not history. As such it incessantly fills the screen with the din of pistols and rifles, and assorted warfare and wenching, shot in sharp color on rugged Spanish sites that strikingly simulate Mexico. Any resemblance to the 1912-1914 campaigns of the bandit-revolutionary in the cause of liberal President Madero and against General Huerta is purely coincidental."
...
Wikipedia