A well-made film with many of the right character ingredients. Brando plays the Eastwood-type lead so well that you start to wonder if he may well have made an even better "Man with no Name" than Clint, had the role come his way. John Saxon works hard to make his "evil Mexican" work, and does reasonably well. However, the potential to develop the psychotic aspects of the character, which is strongly indicated in the early part of the film, isn't given sufficient attention by the director in succeeding reels. It needs to be made more clear that Chuy is crazy as well as bad.
Saxon's character definitely deserves a very sticky end and by half-way through the film, we really need to see this guy get it. However, just being picked off from a distance with a rifle is somewhat disappointing for the audience, and even Brando and the girl seem a little let down. Sergio Leone would no doubt have laid on something considerably more sanguine and theatrical.
Banditto specialist Emilio Fernandez and Alex Montoya give really excellent villainy support and are both duly dispatched by Brando in the usual way. Anjanjette Comer is a little miscast in the difficult role of Chuy Medina's unwilling chattel. I really think she needed, and the audience expects for her, to be able to terminate a few pistoleros on her own account, instead of just being a passive "damsel in distress", and leaving all the rough stuff to Marlon.
The director makes good use of close-ups of faces, eyes, and heaters, but tends not to develop some of the scenes sufficiently. The exception to this would be the scorpion-assisted arm-wrestle, which was very effective. Come to think of it, the whole film tended to go off the boil after this scene leading to a conclusion which was not really a stylistic match to the rest of the film. Would have worked better for me if Brando's character had returned home (a) with the horse but without the girlfriend, (b) with the girl but minus the horse, or (c) with both, but dying from wounds received in the big gun-down. Option (b) probably the best. That way he would have to spend the rest of his life raising a dozen kids and shooing bugs out of the cornfield instead of becoming an asshole rancher and making money.
Not too bad but could have been much better. As it stands, the film tends to be neither fish nor feather, residing stylistically somewhere between the traditional western, the interpretations of Leone and the continental directors and the classic "mayhem in Mexico" works of Sam Peckinpah.
Emilio Fernandez went on to play the memorable bad-ass, "Generalissimo Mapache" in Peckinpah's "The Wild Bunch", for which his role in "The Appaloosa " was no doubt a good preparation.
R. B.
Saxon's character definitely deserves a very sticky end and by half-way through the film, we really need to see this guy get it. However, just being picked off from a distance with a rifle is somewhat disappointing for the audience, and even Brando and the girl seem a little let down. Sergio Leone would no doubt have laid on something considerably more sanguine and theatrical.
Banditto specialist Emilio Fernandez and Alex Montoya give really excellent villainy support and are both duly dispatched by Brando in the usual way. Anjanjette Comer is a little miscast in the difficult role of Chuy Medina's unwilling chattel. I really think she needed, and the audience expects for her, to be able to terminate a few pistoleros on her own account, instead of just being a passive "damsel in distress", and leaving all the rough stuff to Marlon.
The director makes good use of close-ups of faces, eyes, and heaters, but tends not to develop some of the scenes sufficiently. The exception to this would be the scorpion-assisted arm-wrestle, which was very effective. Come to think of it, the whole film tended to go off the boil after this scene leading to a conclusion which was not really a stylistic match to the rest of the film. Would have worked better for me if Brando's character had returned home (a) with the horse but without the girlfriend, (b) with the girl but minus the horse, or (c) with both, but dying from wounds received in the big gun-down. Option (b) probably the best. That way he would have to spend the rest of his life raising a dozen kids and shooing bugs out of the cornfield instead of becoming an asshole rancher and making money.
Not too bad but could have been much better. As it stands, the film tends to be neither fish nor feather, residing stylistically somewhere between the traditional western, the interpretations of Leone and the continental directors and the classic "mayhem in Mexico" works of Sam Peckinpah.
Emilio Fernandez went on to play the memorable bad-ass, "Generalissimo Mapache" in Peckinpah's "The Wild Bunch", for which his role in "The Appaloosa " was no doubt a good preparation.
R. B.