Barquero

Like contemporaries Charles Bronson and Lee Marvin, Lee Van Cleef did his sojuourn in European films mostlywesterns and graduated to leads. Unlike Marvin, Bronson, and others like Claude Akins, Neville Brand, and Jack Elam, Van Cleef never did explore a comic side. Maybe he just didn't have one. He's also one strange hero as he is in Barquero.

In this film Lee Van Cleef is the man with the barge who ferries people across a deep river. He doesn't even particularly like the settlers in the town on the river bank that has grown up. But when Warren Oates's gang of renegade cutthroats want to use that barge, Van Cleef proves to be the savior of the town.

Oates who usually plays with a comic twist either as a good guy or a bad guy is one deadly serious villain here. His gang massacres a whole town to leave no witnesses to a shipment of arms that they are robbing. Van Cleef knows well what they are capable of.

Forrest Tucker who can be comic here provides the comic relief as a mountain man. the last of a breed who proves to be Van Cleef's salvation. He rescues Van Cleef when he's captured by a couple of Oates's men who were sent to secure the ferry man for the gang. He has some sardonically funny scenes with John Davis Chandler, the captive.

Mariette Hartley is in this and she's the wife of a local storekeeper who is also a most pious reverend. When he's left behind and captured by Oates, Hartley makes Van Cleef an offer that an old time gentlemanly cowboy hero would never take up. Think of Clint Eastwood in High Plains Drifter, that's the kind of hero Van Cleef is.

This one is a must for fans of Lee Van Cleef.

Finely crafted production by Aubrey Schenck, with most of its action confined to a spot on the Rio Grande where a bunch of "squatters" have set up a primitive frontier town and a man (the "barquero", Van Cleef) has built a barge connected by rope to cross the river. When a bandit leader (Oates) and his group plunder and burn a nearby town, killing everyone, they make fast tracks to the barge, only to find the town evacuated and the barge on the other side of the river, with Cleef and his woodsman friend (Tucker) reluctantly defending the mostly nebbish townspeople. The script's sardonic tone is probably indebted to contemporary Italian oaters, but its ferocious drive and its focus on a personal confrontation between to determined, opposed strangers is very effective. Cleef is good at showing that he has no real concern for the villagers, but is absolutely set on not letting Oates' bandits burn his barge. Oates is a bit over the top (method acting is the worst type to go over the top with), especially in the poorly-conceived scene where he shoots the river. Solid action film with a significant difference going for it.

The Quick Pitch: Remy (Warren Oates) is the leader of a band of outlaws. He wants to cross a river on his way to Mexico. The titular barquero, Travis (Lee Van Cleef), isn't going to let him use his barge. He knows it will be destroyed to prevent others from following. A stand-off ensues.

Until I stumbled on this last night, I had no idea Barquero even existed. What a find! Warren Oates and Lee Van Cleef in the same movie. These guys just ooze machismo. Throw in a supporting cast featuring Forrest Tucker and Kerwin Mathews and there was no way I wouldn't enjoy Barquero. The opening shootout as Remy and his men slaughter everyone in a small town to steal a wagon load of guns is an over-the-top joy to behold. And the last act where Remy and Travis are drawn into their final, inevitable showdown is just plain old awesome.

The problem with Barquero is the bits that come between the beginning and the end. Unfortunately, the second act really drags with Remy and Travis separated by a river. They shout back and forth, but there's really not much else that happens. Too bad, because with this kind of cast, some fantastic locations, and plenty of blood and violence, Barquero had the potential to be legendary.

6/10

Around 1970 the Western genre had a new lease of life from the success of the Spaghetti Western. This is one of many attempts to marry the classic Western with this new style, and it does it quite convincingly. In the title role we have Lee van Cleef as the most impressive ferryman in film history - making his colleague at the Styx worry about the security of his job. Lee is up against Warren Oates and his bandits who need his ferry to transport their booty. Consequently, we are treated with the rare sight of a naval battle in a Western.

The villains of this piece are rather traditional Western villains (John Davis Chandler plays a delightful little dirtbag) while the heros (van Cleef and Tucker), all enigmatic and a bit on the shady side, seem to have been borrowed from Cinecitta. The excellent music by Dominic Frontiere is also presented in Italian style.

Barquero has really no excuse for not living up to its full potential. The inspired casting choice of piting genre stalwarts Lee Van Cleef and Warren Oates in opposite sides of the river against each other and the idea behind the film – a group of ragtag cut-throats led by Oates transporting rifles and silver after a successful raid at a nearby town to the Sonoran territory in Mexico and desperately in need to cross the river before the army gets them while Lee Van Cleef as the boatman holds the barq at the other bank and refuses to pick them up. That should have been enough to keep Barquero afloat and my terrible puns at bay (ahem).

What really keeps the film down is the unpolished, roughly sketched script. The first and closing acts sustain interest through lengthy bouts of gunfighting but some kind of semi-compelling plot needs to be assembled for the middle act where sadly Barquero fails to kick the conflict into high gear, a hard feat to accomplish with a story that seems to invite conflict and could have gone into so many different places. Instead what we get by the end of act two is the good guys outwitting the bad and saving the hostage Warren Oates was keeping tied up and Oates half mad and desperate (as the army draws closer with every passing moment) shooting holes at the water and saying to his henchman "I shot the river". Not particularly endearing, don't you think? Forrest Tucker steals scenes in the role of ant-eating Mountain Phil while Van Cleef and Oates seem to be representing two different western archetypes – Van Cleef the romantic hero eclipsed by the coming modernization of the west, represented in the movie by a bunch of squatters he's called to protect, Oates the rough-hewn, murderous son of a bitch, the gritty and hardboiled aspect of the western, pioneered at the time by spaghetti westerns of whose villains he's somewhat reminiscent of.

Definitely better seventies westerns to keep the genre aficionado occupied out there but it's worth a watch for its marquee value, Van Cleef and Oates a dream match made in heaven and both in pretty good shape.