You have Westerns, and Westerns set in the north called Northerns, and Westerns set in the Middle East called Easters... I'm not sure what a Western set in South America should be called? Southerns? But I always figured that was a Western set in the Southern states (that weren't Texas).
This was one of a series of movies 20th Century Fox made overseas after the war to use frozen funds - Captain from Castile, The Black Rose, Kangaroo. They usually starred Tyrone Power or were clearly meant to star Tyrone Power - he isn't in this one, instead they use Rory Calhoun has a substitute, and Calhoun isn't bad. At least he looks interested in women and can handle the action stuff well enough.
There's some really fantastic views of Argentina - the deserts, snow capped mountains, plains, gauchos. It looks fantastic.
The story is dull. Calhoun is a gaucho who kills a man in a duel, then goes into the army as opposed to prison, then deserts, then meets Gene Tierney, then leaves, then becomes a bandit, then goes on a trek, then gives himself up.
And it's annoying because the piece has so much potential. A gaucho worried about a changing world, a world of increasing automation and loss of his way of life - that's a great theme. But the way the material is presented here, the story is just dull - and there's no sense of catharsis at the ending. It's like writer-producer Philip Dunne got too caught up in doing location work he forgot to do the script.
The gaucho having a lifelong bond with a childhood friend who works for the railways - that's got heaps of potential. But not only is dull Hugh Beaumont cast, the character is flat. He just sort of pops up to help out Calhoun - and he does it so often it's like "are they in love"? Beaumont should have been Calhoun's actual brother - I thought he was until re-reading a synopsis.
The Tierney-Calhoun romance starts off interestingly - she's this high class girl who is saved by the gaucho. But she just ends up as this weak sap who hangs around the gaucho, wanting him to get married. She's got no spirit, no spine - the whole she's rich-he's-poor thing barely makes a mention. We needed to see more of her living high class - being with Beaumont, having him be rich too. Make it a real love triangle. There needed to be another female character too as a counterpoint to Tierney.
Richard Boone starts off promisingly as the army sergeant who gives Calhoun a hard time. Then he spends the rest of the movie chasing Calhoun around, like he's in love with him too. Why not just make Boone a villain? The film badly needs one
Things that sound exciting are minimised - like Calhoun becoming a bandit. Everett Sloane livens up a few scenes as a gaucho but there's too little of him.
It's a shame. You know a lot of this exotic Fox location adventure movies aren't very good - King of the Khyber Rifles, Lydia Bailey.
No comments:
Post a Comment