Diagonaldi Very well executed

ReaderKenka Let's be realistic.

PiraBit if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

Haven Kaycee It is encouraging that the film ends so strongly.Otherwise, it wouldn't have been a particularly memorable film

Fred Schaefer BRING ME THE HEAD OF ALFREDO GARCIA was a punch line from the day it was released in 1974; and for director Sam Peckinpah, a commercial and artistic disaster that did great damage to his reputation; a reputation built on his impressive earlier work like THE WILD BUNCH and STRAW DOGS, both milestones in the cinema of violence. But for many of his most ardent fans in the critical community, ALFREDO GARCIA, was an ultra- violent and self indulgent wallow in ugliness for its own sake, alternately homophobic and misogynistic in the extreme. What they didn't understand was that ALFREDO GARCIA may well have been one of the most truly personal films ever made, a full representation of how Sam Peckinpah saw himself and his place in a very nasty world-that world being Hollywood.Bennie the lounge lizard is clearly Peckinpah, and his odyssey to find and retrieve the head of the late Alfredo Garcia in return for a bounty that he believes will allow him to redeem a wasted life is an allegory for all his years of toil in the film business, while the parade of killers, rapists, henchmen, Mob toadies, and El Jefes Bennie encounters along the way are stand ins for the lowlifes (mainly producers and their flunkies) who bedeviled Peckinpah throughout his career and thwarted his ambitions while stifling his talent. ALFREDO GARCIA is by Peckinpah's own account his one film that was most fully realized and free from outside tampering. And what does it say for Peckinpah that his own stand in is a sleazy, alcoholic failure, getting by down in Mexico on the wrong side of 40 by playing the piano in dive bars after years in the Army? A man willing to hunt down a corpse and decapitate it for money-said money being a reward posted by a back country Mexican crime lord, a man so ruthless he'd break his pregnant daughter's arm to learn the name of the man who knocked her up. By all recollections, the real Sam Peckinpah was a remarkably sensitive man, but one who hid it all behind a well crafted veneer of hard drinking, foul tempered, sarcastic, macho BS. He was also deeply paranoid, alcoholic and possibly Bi-polar. That he would lay it all out on film for all the world to see says much about this supremely "difficult" man.But ALFREDO GARCIA is far from Peckinpah's best work, especially looking back from the vantage point of four decades. The pacing is clearly off and the strong narrative drive of THE WILD BUNCH, STRAW DOGS,and THE GETAWAY is sorely missing-the old energy just isn't there in many scenes. Even the shoot outs-a Peckinpah staple-often feel like retreads from earlier work. One does have to allow for the passing of time when seeing ALFREDO GARCIA now and realize that movies in the 1970's-made in the pre MTV and video game era-simply told their stories at a much slower speed. When Bennie and his whore with a heart of gold girlfriend, Elita, are traveling through Mexico to find the graveyard where Alfredo Garcia is buried, the movie seems to just amble.Yet the brilliance of the old Peckinpah still shows up, especially in the opening scene, where El Jefe's pregnant daughter sits beside a quiet pond amid rural beauty. She is then summoned to the hacienda of her father and brutally forced to give up the name of the man who impregnated her-a former underling who got frisky with the boss's daughter. Only after we hear the title sentence and there is a quick cut to men racing away on motorcycles and in corvettes do we realize the film is set in modern times-a great fake out. And there is the scene where Bennie and Elita have a picnic and talk about the future; she gets him to propose and for a moment these two luckless characters actually seem to have a chance at turning their lives around. Peckinpah's love of Mexico and its way of life was never more vivid and self evident. As in all of Peckinpah's films, there is some great dialog.ALFREDO GARCIA is a great showcase for Warren Oates, one of the few movies this wonderful and gifted actor ever carried on his own. Oates spent most of his career making a lot of mediocre films and TV shows a hundred times better than they would have been otherwise if he hadn't been in the supporting cast. A Peckinpah regular from RIDE THE HIGH COUNTRY, MAJOR DUNDEE, and THE WILD BUNCH, his Bennie is Oates's finest hour. Who else could have pulled off those scenes where Bennie rides along in his car talking to a rotting head in the passenger seat? His sudden death in 1982 robbed us of years of great work; I've always felt that if he'd had another two decades, there would have been a Best Supporting Oscar with his name on it sooner of later, just like with Jack Palance and James Coburn.Emilio Fernandez just had to show up and not smile in order to convey El Jefe's cruelty and hatefulness. Isela Vega, who played Elita, was no great actress, but she didn't have to be, I well remember her lay out in Playboy. By all accounts, Gig Young was a degenerate alcoholic by this point in his career and the violent murder- suicide that ended his life a few years later sadly underscores his scenes, especially the bloody shootout he and his partner/lover, Robert Webber, have late in the film. Kris Kristofferson shows up as a biker who rapes Elita and briefly lives to regret it. After the debacle that was the making of PAT GARRETT AND BILLY THE KID, Peckinpah probably should have tried to make a more commercial film like THE GETAWAY, instead of something so close to his heart, but unlike his alter ego, Bennie, the man wasn't always after the big bucks.

mazec666 After the catastrophic production of PAT GARRETT AND BILLY THE KID, Sam Peckinpah finally got total autonomy from United Artists with the most unusual movie on his filmography.BRING ME THE HEAD OF ALFREDO GARCIA is one hell of an alcohol-soaked, blood-drenched joyride through the beautiful countryside of Mexico. Believe it or not, this is a film that dares to be unapologetic and different for a personal reason. Unsung character actor Warren Oates delivers an outstanding performance as the shades-sporting piano player Bennie. The down-and-out American is hired by two eccentric hit men (Gig Young & Robert Webber) to do a murderous dirty deed for them: By delivering a slain gigolo's severed head to a wealthy land baron (Emilio Fernandez) for a cool million dollar bounty.Mexican actress Isela Vega is an earthy presence as the curvaceous songstress Elita. Kris Kristofferson is awesome as always in his all-too-brief role as an unnamed hippie biker. Morbid, repulsive and melancholic in its own passionate way of mixing dark comedy, buddy movie clichés and Shakespearian tragedy which mirrors Peckinpah's downward spiral. Considered by many admirers as one of his last true works, ALFREDO GARCIA is an iconoclastic work of not only American cinema but visceral cinema indeed.

Coventry This film indisputably has one of the greatest sounding titles in history, and it features an absolutely phenomenal performance from one of the coolest but sadly most underrated actors of the 1970's, but still I can't help concluding that "Bring me the Head of Alfredo Garcia" is an overall disappointing and mundane flick. I loved the gritty atmosphere and the fact that every single character that gets introduced is a despicable sack of sleaze, but at the same time this film doesn't feature any suspense or surprise whatsoever. The whole thing is predictable from start to finish and the plot you imagine in your head upon reading the title is, in fact, the exact plot of the film. Don't get me wrong, I really appreciate simplistic plots, as they quite often result in the most entertaining movies. But the main issue here is that writer/director (and notorious eccentric person) Sam Peckinpah isn't really interested in plot but merely preoccupied with exclusively introducing male characters that are chauvinist, machismo and pseudo- potent. It feels like our protagonist Bennie isn't only on a mission to find a human head, but also on a quest to prove to everyone he encounters that there's absolutely nothing wrong with his manliness. He's even in a continuous competition with the titular Alfredo Garcia character, and he's dead practically the entire movie! "Bring me the Head…" could have been a fantastic 70's classic, especially with the massive loads of extreme graphic violence and the plentiful of mentally messed up characters, if maybe directed by someone less focused on testosterone and women-unfriendliness. If, say, Quentin Tarantino had a script like this to work with, the movie would have been out of this world brilliant. And I'm convinced that the combination Tarantino and actor Warren Oates would have give fireworks as well. Oates gives away a uniquely terrific performance. Arguably the best in his entire career, although personally I loved and admired him even more in "Dillinger" and "Cockfighter". Warren Oates was one of the sole actors in Hollywood who managed to simultaneously come across as melancholic as well as cool and macho. He truly was an intense and dedicated actor who single-handedly contributed quite a lot to making the 1970's the best cinematic decade of all.

seymourblack-1 Sam Peckinpah was an extraordinary and controversial filmmaker who during his career earned both respect and notoriety. "Bring Me The Head Of Alfredo Garcia" is a movie which illustrates some of the reasons why he achieved this reputation and also provides an offbeat piece of entertainment which leaves a lasting impression.Some Peckinpah trademarks such as extreme violence, misogyny and well choreographed action scenes are featured on numerous occasions but the movie's most compelling component is its depiction of the journey taken by a guy whose motivation gradually changes from pure greed to a need to escape to a better life and then ultimately, a need for redemption.When an extremely wealthy Mexican landowner called El Jefe (Emilio Fernadez) discovers that the man who'd deserted his pregnant, unmarried daughter is Alfredo Garcia, he offers a $1,000,000 reward for whoever brings him the head of the man who he'd previously treated like a son.A little time later, in a tourist bar in Mexico City, two well dressed bounty hunters called Quill (Gig Young) and Sappensly (Robert Webber) meet Bennie (Warren Oates) who's the establishment's American piano player. The two hit-men are finding it difficult to locate Garcia and after Bennie learns from his girlfriend Elita (Isela Vega) that Garcia has recently been killed in a car accident, he agrees to bring them Garcia's head for a payment of $10,000.Elita, a prostitute who'd previously had an affair with Garcia knows where his body is buried and so she and Bennie go on a cross country journey to locate the hunted man's grave. What follows includes the arrival of two bikers who plan to rape Elita, an attack by some other bounty hunters who steal Garcia's head and another attack by members of Garcia's family. Nearly all these people end up dead and the body count continues to climb inexorably until the movie reaches its violent and spectacular climax.A tremendous number of people get killed in this movie and there are many examples of Peckinpah's propensity for depicting violence very graphically. His penchant for using slow motion sequences in shoot outs is seen by his detractors as a distasteful glamorisation of violence whereas others regard it as an example of his undeniable talent. The most shocking incidents, however, are where El Jefe has his daughter publicly humiliated and tortured and Sappensly, very casually and cruelly knocks a woman unconscious.The milieu within which Bennie makes his journey is bleak and chaotic and his efforts to progress or prosper become utterly futile. In this predicament and despite the obvious dangers involved, all that he's been able to do is follow his destiny and ultimately this is what makes his story so tragic and memorable. Whilst this movie may not be entertaining in the conventional sense, it is unquestionably a very powerful and absorbing drama which is also profoundly existential.