Review of Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (1974) by R.c. K — 04 Jun 2009

Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (1974).

This Sam Peckinpah film isn't a feel-good date movie. It's actually dark, brutal, and hard to look at, but it's a very personal expression of Peckinpah, which tells you where he was coming from. Although it was a box office failure, it has grown to become a cult classic, especially among Peckinpah fans.

The movie is about a rich landowner padron, El Jefe (Emilio Fernández) whose daughter was knocked up by Alfredo Garcia. El Jefe puts a million dollar price, literally on his head as proof that he's dead. A whole entourage of private detectives and bounty hunters begin combing several countries looking for this guy.

Benjamin (Warren Oates) is a luckless, low-life wonderer, now playing in a piano bar in Mexico, hustling the tourists. He meets two of these detectives and finds out that his prostitute girlfriend, Elita (Isela Vega) knows Al Garcia in the biblical sense, and also knows that he died in an accident and is buried in his village. He's offered $5,000 to bring the detectives Al's head. However, he's being followed by sinister men for a double-cross.

Bennie takes Elita on a road trip with the idea of cashing in on digging this guy up, to the disgust of Elita. Bennie and Elita's relationship is an unusual one, filled with love, desire, disgust, and anger, but at the same time you know that they love and care for each other. Bennie is obsessively driven, in part for the need for money, then for vengeance, and retribution. It's erie watching Bennie talk to Al's ever-ripening and fly-covered sack that his head is in, while driving his beat-up Impala down the road.

I'm not necessarily a big Peckinpah fan, so I have mixed feelings about this movie. I was very disappointed when I first saw this film in the theaters, but have slowly grown to like it on DVD, but I realize that it's not for everyone.