Review of In Old Arizona (1928) by Michael T — 22 Mar 2017

Some people would say you have to take into consideration when a film was made and the conditions at the time the film was made to effectively review it. Luckily, I don?t burden myself with all that, because I review films solely based on how they work for me when I watch them. As a result, I can say that I didn?t like In Old Arizona all that much. Sure, it was a landmark because it was one of the first feature films that used sound, but that didn?t impact my personal opinion. In fact, the newness of sound led this movie down some strange paths, as they added in moments that seemed completely out of left field until I realized they were experimenting with the sounds they could record. To me it was a bit like watching early 3-D films that would just insert shots of things poking out right at the camera in order to play with the new technology, except in this scenario it?s a random crying baby brought on screen or a pan of sizzling ham and eggs.

When you get past that aspect of the film, In Old Arizona is a decent story about a bandit with a heart of gold. I love that, even in this era well before the production code, they still felt a need to make the Cisco Kid a good guy. The nice thing about this movie is that it also makes the Sergeant sympathetic, even though he?s trying to catch our hero. This dynamic makes it so we don?t know how the end will play out and who will win. The actual conclusion of the film is pretty daring, and one that surprised me a little. It wasn?t enough to make me love the movie, but I appreciated that the story wasn?t totally predictable. Perhaps the most frustrating part of this movie (aside from the understandably bad sound quality) was that they didn?t quite have enough story to fill the runtime. There was a lot of moments where I felt the movie drag, and that?s probably why I noticed all the little sound experiments I mentioned earlier, because they were extending things when I just wanted to see what happened next. I can see film historians needing to watch In Old Arizona because of the progress it made, but for most people I?d say you can skip this one.