Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (1974)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (1974) – S. Peckinpah

“No one loses all the time” – except maybe Warren f-ing Oates in this film (in a brilliant turn as a too cool misfit gringo in shades working in a rundown Mexican piano-bar).  But we don’t meet him until after director Sam Peckinpah gives us the set-up:  after his grand-daughter turns up pregnant, a Mexican land baron declares the title phrase, which sets loose the hounds (including tough white guys Gig Young and Robert Webber).  Through his girlfriend (Isela Vega), Oates gets inside information that Garcia is already dead – so it’s just matter of driving across Mexico in a red ’62 Chevy Impala convertible to his grave, digging him up, cutting off his head (with a machete bought for the purpose), and bringing it to the man offering the bounty.  Easier said than done.  Of course, before the film is over, we are given a dose of Peckinpah’s trademark slow motion gunplay. But we also get some 1970s romantic interludes (complete with strings) – unfortunately interrupted by Kris Kristofferson as a would-be rapist.  So, it’s not pretty or light-hearted but it is strange and unpredictable and perhaps a little bit sly (Peckinpah knows his audience by now and might just be messing with them).  But then there’s Oates with his glorious performance (not quite as stylized as in Two Lane Blacktop, more desperate) – you want him to succeed in the end, after all he’s gone through in the film and all that you know he’d already gone through.  However, this is Peckinpah at his most fatalistic and the point is that the world doesn’t cater to losers.  Still, Oates does give it a helluva try.