Review of Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (1974) by Al M — 12 Aug 2010

A truly bizarre entry in the Peckinpah canon, Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia is a somewhat rambling, exploitationist piece of cinema that explores the nature of revenge, violence, and passion. The Jefe desires revenge because his daughter has been impregnated by Alfredo Garcia, a lothario who he had taken in as a business partner.

But the Jefe's revenge is a hollow one based on social expectations, for he obvisouly cares nothing for his daughter since he breaks her arm to learn the name of her lover. After putting a bounty on Alfredo Garcia's head, one man sets out with his prostitute girlfriend, who is also incidentally a lover of Alfredo's, to get the head of Garcia and the bounty.

But all of Mexico also wants the bounty, and hence the countryside erupts into a sea of violent gun battles. After crossing a landscape of rapists, backstabbers, prostitutes, con artists, thieves, and bounty hunters, the viewer is left in an amoral hole.

Peckinpah strips away any sense of ethical center and leaves the viewer falling through a nihilistic abyss. Perhaps this was why it has vehemently hated by many and passionately loved by an equal sized faction.

It is a bleak thrill ride through the nether regions of the human soul, and Peckinpah makes it every bit as fun as his Westerns like The Wild Bunch, but it harbors a dark center that one cannot escape at the film's climax.