Real good and fascinating

Rating: 10/10 (9 August 2010)

That's a real American Western. Not spaghetti in the least and not parading à la John Wayne in the even slightest least. Real tough, dirty, hateful. Two lazy and absolutely zilch young men who do not want to do anything, learn anything, even swimming, and yet want the money other people are making so that they both with their common lady love can have high life on the frontier. Just marginal and incompetent young men who do not have any sense of time, of the past and the future, of what was possible before and what is leading to no future, but who cares about the future since we have good money, good food, good wine and good bourbon right now. Tomorrow is another day and we have to spend the night somewhere before we reach that tomorrow. And they don't learn. First they do not see that trains are finished and that train companies are going to set up the real tracking teams they need to capture them, dead if possible. When they finally realize trains are out just like banks are finished, they go to New York and board a boat to Bolivia. And there they discover banks are not paying, local bandits are both more numerous, better organized and tolerated, but also not quite fast enough for two Yankee outlaws. But they also will find out that no one is going to close their eyes and they will report everything. They won't wait or be afraid. Let's tell the local police that is quite plentiful, and they will in their turn call the cavalry and then dying will no longer be an option. It will be the only bottleneck way out, shot by hundred of bullets and not two or three. Beautiful film that tries to give the real smell and feel of the frontier in those days, dirty, smelly, dusty, potent with filth and total lack of courage, but economically enterprising and trusting the best trackers and the best professional shooters to do the job. Posses and vigilantes were out now in the time of railroads and steam engines, and industry and two digit growth rates. The sentimental and psychological side is maybe not as rich as in the spaghetti westerns, but the film is effective to make you be relieved from any fear that such a past could come back. It is gone and good riddance. And what if we were confronted to that kind of gangsterism again in our suburban sprawl? Then I guess we would have to call the cavalry in again.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne, University Paris 8 Saint Denis, University Paris 12 Créteil, CEGID