Bandolero! (1968)
7/10
Dour and downbeat but well-staged Western with emphasis on hanging and rape; an unusual mixture but smoothly assembled
11 January 2003
Warning: Spoilers
In the sixties Stewart has shown no signs of losing interest in the Western, completing three for Andrew V. McLaglen—the emotional but dignified 'Shenandoah,' 'The Rare Breed,' and 'Bandolero!' He also joins his old colleague, Henry Fonda, for 'Firecreek' and made "The Cheyenne Social Club," under the direction of Gene Kelly…

Stewart embraced the Western relatively late in his career, but did so whole-heartedly and has earned special place in the history of the genre... He probably didn't expect McLaglen to inspire him to a character excessively theatrical, McLaglen's forte was action, and this he delivered in a professional, if hardly spectacular style... The entire tone of the picture, which co-stars Dean Martin as his outlaw younger brother and Raquel Welch, singularly out of place in a Western setting, is decided1y superficial…

Raquel Welch seems painfully ill at ease as the grieving widow of a man killed by fugitive outlaw brothers (Martin and Stewart) in a holdup… She comes across more as a camp-follower than as an outraged widow, who gradually falls in love with Martin… Her suit is aided by Stewart, who would like his younger brother to leave his life of crime and settle down to something more respectable

The plot piles on the Western clichés… It is the post-Civil War west; older brother Stewart fought in the Union Army, younger brother Martin in the Confederate ranks… Pretending to be a hangman (he has stolen the guy's getup on the road) Stewart rescues Martin from the scaffold… After they've held up a bank, intrepid sheriff George Kennedy chases Stewart and Martin to Mexico, with hostage Welch in tow… In a peculiar plot twist, the outlaws find themselves temporary allies with the sheriff when they are set upon by Mexican bandits…

McLaglen does keep the action moving, and Welch tries to be sexy in the style audiences had come to expect of her, but is suffocated under her frustrated widow character...
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