jackmathys

A great movie, yes, but compare these villagers to those in the Magnificent Seven. Here, we have a toothless, cowardly, overly excited, energy-wasting bunch of downright fools, whereas perhaps the worst you can say about the sleepy Mexicans is that they lack expertise in the use of firearms. Is this the Japanese persona, or a caricature? Even one of the samurai, born a farmer, excels in wasting energy, screaming, and acting "wild," and I eagerly waited for his death early in the battle. All of this negative energy turned a village full of village fools into a village full of losers, every death bringing a smile of sadistic triumph to my face! They fight, but their sorties are distinguished more by Spears plunged into dirt, swords beating the air, and worrying over their wounded than by killing the bandits. This will be the last viewing for me: the second goal of a fool is to annoy, and it worked on me.

This film is almost all smoke and no fire. More of a werewolf history, mixed with hearsay and second hand testimony, not much better than most Bigfoot docs.

I was really enjoying the movie and admiring the skill in every scene. But the movie is not a single scene but a whole bunch of scenes put together in one coherent whole, hopefully.

Just as I was troubled as I was watching Brazil by the directo's expectation that I must somehow admire the protagonist, here too, the main protagonist, Vargas, is a fool, a loser and totally incompetent, with his actions the result of impulse rather than coherent and rational thought. He's a loser because he's on his honeymoon and he manages to leave his wife alone for about half a day in extremely dangerous circumstances. Then, in the final moments of the movie, he is seem stumbling over half the city trying to keep a cheap transmitter within hearing distance of a tape recorder he has planted on a partner. Not Heston's fault.