descent into hell
Added 10/1/2009
I have watched this movie over 50 times and assume that it is peckinpah's life or at least how he viewed it. This is a dusty, dirty boozy, violent story which once again reiterates peckinpah's code of honor and ethics, as bizarre as it may be under the circumstances facing the lead character portrayed by Warren Oates(who has a perfect role, believeable to a fault). This movie is not for everyone but should be seen by fans of peckinpah and his slow motion ballets of blood, which are loaded into this thought provoking film.
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Brutality from the inside out...
Added 4/10/2009
Easily one of the best films of 1974, `Bring me the Head of Alfredo Garcia' is intelligent, alarming and brutally entertaining. Highly regarded today as a cult masterpiece, the film is one that you may never have heard of, but one that you really should NOT miss.
After Alfredo Garcia breaks the heart of a wealthy man he has a hit put out on his head. The thing is that Alfredo is already dead. With a lot of people vying for the million dollars offered for Alfredo's head, Bennie, a Mexican piano player, finds himself searching for Alfredo's dead body in order to collect the money himself. With his girlfriend Elita (a friend of Alfredo's) in tow he travels the Mexican countryside in search of his big payoff, leaving a wake of bloody bodies behind him.
The film is marvelously crafted to be so much more than just a violent action film. It is really about the isolation one encounters when his dreams finally become reality. Bennie has always dreamt of this moment, when his worries would be no more and he could spend out his days with the woman he loves, but reaching that dream could cost him that very woman. There is a hardness about Bennie that overtakes him as the days progress, as he gets closer to realizing the travesty that is his mission. He starts out so complacent and almost jovial and slowly yet profoundly becomes guarded and internally destroyed.
With one twist and turn after another, `Bring me the Head of Alfredo Garcia' will keep you glued to your seat in anticipation.
The acting is all very good; from Warren Oates naturally progressive take on Bennie, to Isela Vega's marvelously centered portrayal of Elita. She steals every scene she's in with her wide eyed knowingness. Even Kris Kristofferson brings a depth to his solitary scene that makes for a very nicely done cameo.
The real star here is director Sam Peckinpah. I remember when I watched `Straw Dogs' for the first time. I was just in awe of the directorial achievement the film really was; the mood and precise layering that Peckinpah took to build tensions upon tensions. He does the same thing here, delivering an abrasive yet emotionally stirring film. This is far from just a loud and bloody film, for Peckinpah gives brings it to a personal level. The truth remains that no matter how shocking the films visuals are, it is the inward struggle that is certainly the most painful and most fatal.
Like many have said, and the tagline surely suggest this as well; this film has guts. It's a brutal depiction of desperation, greed, anger and revenge and it works gloriously on every level.
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Bring me the head of Alfredo garcia
Added 11/4/2008
Great movie, as I expected; the price was right and the vendor's service excellent. I won't hesitate to buy from this vendor again.
Thanks! nelson Lozano
0 out of 0 people found this helpful.
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Gross, but Engrossing
Added 6/28/2008
I just recently watched this again on DVD, surely one of the strangest movies ever released by a major studio and by a major American director. Shot on what appears to be a shoestring budget, Peckinpah delivers a story set in a hellish landscape, where drunken killers compete for a bounty on the head of a Don Juan named Alfredo Garcia. Garcia's a marked man for having knocked up a Mexican millionaire's daughter, and we meet some very unsavory characters who want him dead. Watching this movie, which becomes a revenge tale, you can see where Quentin Tarantino got his chops (particularly the scene where Bennie gets buried alive). This movie predates Kill Bill by 30 years, and one can also see where No Country for Old Men came from.
Much of Bring Me the Head is great--the Mexican locations, Warren Oates (Stripes, the Wild Bunch, Dillinger) playing his character Bennie in a white suit and perpetual shades, the existentialist absurdity-of-the-human-condition narrative, and the slow motion and poetic justice of the killing scenes. What bothers me about the movie is puzzling character motivation. The middle scene, in which Bennie's Mexican "wife" befriends her rapist, is odd to say the least, but so too is Bennie's decision not to simply walk away after he's accomplished his mission. I guess it's Peckinpah's vision that no one here lives happily ever after, that destructiveness leads inevitably to self-destructiveness.
Probably my biggest problem with the DVD was the sound quality. There are very often strange echoes when the action gets loud. Hopefully they'll remix the sound for future DVDs.
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Bizarre and entertaining
Added 5/25/2008
This film is so weird that it's completely entertaining. I never could figure out, however, whether this movie is supposed to be serious or is a comedy. That's what makes it so much fun. It's kind of a blood-soaked "Mad, Mad, Mad World". Alfredo Garcia has impregnated the young daughter of a wealthy Mexican hacendado. The rich man puts one million dollars on his head. Criminals and reprobates from all over Mexico converge in a lethal competition to put Garcia's head in a sack.
It's truly bizarre--Warren Oates driving along with his car full of houseflies feeding on Garcia's moldering head. I won't go on because I don't want to spoil it for you. Pardon the pun.
Still I didn't give the film a full five star rating because of one scene involving Kris Kristopherson that I thought was gratuitous sex and nonsense. Otherwise the film is a winner---for me, anyway.
Ron Braithwaite, author of novels--"Skull Rack" and "Hummingbird God"--on the Spanish Conquest of Mexico
1 out of 1 people found this helpful.
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descent into hell
Added 10/1/2009
I have watched this movie over 50 times and assume that it is peckinpah's life or at least how he viewed it. This is a dusty, dirty boozy, violent story which once again reiterates peckinpah's code of honor and ethics, as bizarre as it may be under the circumstances facing the lead character portrayed by Warren Oates(who has a perfect role, believeable to a fault). This movie is not for everyone but should be seen by fans of peckinpah and his slow motion ballets of blood, which are loaded into this thought provoking film.
0 out of 0 people found this helpful.
|
Brutality from the inside out...
Added 4/10/2009
Easily one of the best films of 1974, `Bring me the Head of Alfredo Garcia' is intelligent, alarming and brutally entertaining. Highly regarded today as a cult masterpiece, the film is one that you may never have heard of, but one that you really should NOT miss.
After Alfredo Garcia breaks the heart of a wealthy man he has a hit put out on his head. The thing is that Alfredo is already dead. With a lot of people vying for the million dollars offered for Alfredo's head, Bennie, a Mexican piano player, finds himself searching for Alfredo's dead body in order to collect the money himself. With his girlfriend Elita (a friend of Alfredo's) in tow he travels the Mexican countryside in search of his big payoff, leaving a wake of bloody bodies behind him.
The film is marvelously crafted to be so much more than just a violent action film. It is really about the isolation one encounters when his dreams finally become reality. Bennie has always dreamt of this moment, when his worries would be no more and he could spend out his days with the woman he loves, but reaching that dream could cost him that very woman. There is a hardness about Bennie that overtakes him as the days progress, as he gets closer to realizing the travesty that is his mission. He starts out so complacent and almost jovial and slowly yet profoundly becomes guarded and internally destroyed.
With one twist and turn after another, `Bring me the Head of Alfredo Garcia' will keep you glued to your seat in anticipation.
The acting is all very good; from Warren Oates naturally progressive take on Bennie, to Isela Vega's marvelously centered portrayal of Elita. She steals every scene she's in with her wide eyed knowingness. Even Kris Kristofferson brings a depth to his solitary scene that makes for a very nicely done cameo.
The real star here is director Sam Peckinpah. I remember when I watched `Straw Dogs' for the first time. I was just in awe of the directorial achievement the film really was; the mood and precise layering that Peckinpah took to build tensions upon tensions. He does the same thing here, delivering an abrasive yet emotionally stirring film. This is far from just a loud and bloody film, for Peckinpah gives brings it to a personal level. The truth remains that no matter how shocking the films visuals are, it is the inward struggle that is certainly the most painful and most fatal.
Like many have said, and the tagline surely suggest this as well; this film has guts. It's a brutal depiction of desperation, greed, anger and revenge and it works gloriously on every level.
0 out of 0 people found this helpful.
|
Bring me the head of Alfredo garcia
Added 11/4/2008
Great movie, as I expected; the price was right and the vendor's service excellent. I won't hesitate to buy from this vendor again.
Thanks! nelson Lozano
0 out of 0 people found this helpful.
|
