El guerrillero

As I watched "The Fighter", I enjoyed the movie very much. However, again and again, I kept asking myself "why did they change the original story so much?" as I watched. In a few cases, perhaps it made some sense...but often it just didn't...and I cannot understand why they didn't trust the original Jack London story ("The Mexican").

Richard Conte, of all people, stars as Felipe Rivera. Casting him and Lee J. Cobb as Durango just seemed weird. After all, they clearly were NOT Hispanic and had no trace of a Mexican accent. I am not saying this because I am Mr. Political Correctness...it's more that it really seemed unrealistic to have the pair playing Mexicans.

Rivera recently crossed the border from Mexico to El Paso, Texas. It turns out his village was wiped out by federal troops loyal to the dictator, Porfirio Diaz...President for Life in Mexico. Now he plans on working with other dissidents in Texas to help topple the regime. His greatest skill is his ability in the boxing ring and he boxes to fund the revolution.

As I mentioned above, a lot of details from the original story were changed...and in some case I had no idea why. For example, Rivera murders an evil General....but in the movie the victim is a Colonel and he's not killed by Rivera but shot by revolutionaries. Also, the reason for Rivera's village being wiped out was changed...perhaps because the production company thought it might seem 'left wing' to have them killed following a strike by employees. All I know is that I sure would have liked to have seen the original tale.

Now if you ignore the changes and weird casting, the film STILL is quite good....slightly better than the very low overall score listed for the movie on IMDB. Not great...but very good despite itself.

By the way, although it's not important, I noticed that when Rivera and the lady went to the shooting booth at the carnival, they never paid to play the game yet were given prizes after shooting. Not paying their dimes was an interesting tiny omission.

The film is too short and ends where it actually should begin. However, those intense 90 minutes are loaded with drama and pathos, and Richard Conte (although too old for the role) is perfect in characters like this, the underdog who has nothing to lose (having lost everything already) and for that reason the more to fight for. Lee J. Cobb as the rebel leader Durango is always good and reliable, and the only objection against the film should be against its abrupt ending without a proper finish. What makes the film enjoyable, in spite of all the atrocities and rough fighting, is the delicious guitar music all through by Vicente Gomez, which actually adds a dimension of poetry to the drama. The Mexical scenes are delightful, reminding of films like "The Mark of Zorro" and the Mexican "The Pearl", and you are grateful for the idylls like oases in this grim drama of revolution and oppression. Richard Conte is always good and worth watching, and perhaps here more so than usual.

This isn't so much a boxing movie as a peasant rebelling against a cruel dictatorship movie. Richard Conte (who, at 42, was about 15 years too old for the role of Felipe Rivera) plays the peasant in question who flees to New Mexico to raise funds for the rebellion after his beloved is murdered by troops. The film is a clumsy amalgamation of two stories - Rivera's life as a peasant, and his attempts to raise money to buy guns for the rebellion through boxing - the former of which is sandwiched between the latter as an extended flashback. As always in this type of film all the peasants are decent noble types and all the troops are leering sadists.

Lee J. Cobb plays Durango, the heroic rebel leader and he isn't that great. He was called upon a few times in his career to portray latino types and, with his tendency to exaggerate the accents he was never convincing. In fact the film is fairly ordinary throughout and directed in a workmanlike manner by Herbert Kline (who also wrote), although the fight sequences are fairly good for the time. This is one for Conte completists only.

At the time this film was released in 1952 I was a sophomore intercollegiate boxer (135 lbs, 6'2"). I saw the film twice in 1952. I had seen other boxing films but none as realistic as boxing by Richard Conte. He was an incredibly talented and under rated actor. In you love boxing see this film! Conte looks like and moves like a boxer. Considering Conte was 42 years old at the time this film was made he appears in remarkable physical condition. Not only is the boxing itself "real" but the ostensible purpose of the boxing matches make sense. Conte's people need guns and he boxes to get money for those guns. It is difficult to remember scenes of a film I saw 56 years ago. I do remember that Conte during the course of boxing matches appeared to be exhausted just would a real boxer after a match. Of course the weight class I boxed, and especially intercollegiate boxing, is never designed to injure/harm anyone. Real boxing is designed to injure/damage the opponent.

Conte plays Felipe Rivera, a Mexican who joins up with a revolutionary group trying to wrest the country from its current leadership. His motivation is unclear to begin with but a long flashback takes care of that. Rivera's chief means of assisting the cause is boxing to raise cash for it. The film is flawed, there's no getting away from that. It has plenty of very wooden, stereotypical acting and the script is pretty crude. But there is some outstanding camera-work here (James Wong Howe was cinematographer, along with an uncredited Floyd Crosby, who shot High Noon and worked on From Here to Eternity), especially the boxing scenes but there are great moments throughout, and Conte's performance is another highlight. His role is ultimately more three dimensional than is often the case (in my experience - seen 9 of his films) and his fight scenes are great. Conte fans will almost certainly enjoy the film. Cobb's performance (as the leader of the revolutionaries) will divide viewers, but I enjoyed it - enthusiasm over realism. All in all, good fun. It's public domain and you can watch it online on The Internet Archive.