Nayan Gough
A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.
donaldlewkowski
I like the movie when I first saw it decades ago, and it still commands your attention; Bronson is good.But in the intervening years deconstruction has made us all take a closer look at what the movie is selling.Hollywood portrays the races and sexes and sells us the Hollywood moral system.This movie is an early example of Hollywood's hatred of White people, especially White men.This movie portrays White men from absolutely vile creatures to weak cowards who fail to stop their evil comrades.Big in Hollywood is the hatred of Christianity.This movie displays Hollywood's anti-Christian bigotry. One example of the bigotry is the incident wherein evil White men are justly killed by the non-White Chato and then the rest of the evil White men pray when they bury them.
Red-Barracuda
The storyline to Chato's Land is simple as can be. A half-breed Indian is harassed by a redneck sheriff while having a drink in a bar. He is forced to kill the racist and is then pursued out into his desert homeland by a posse hell bent on retribution. Very little time is spent on setting the scene; the basic set-up is underway in less than five minutes. The director is Michael Winner, who it's probably fair to say is famous for having a somewhat sledgehammer approach to film-making. His style is very unsubtle and his movies are often pretty tough, violent and unpolitically correct. You could almost view him as an English version of the Italian director Umberto Lenzi. As a result, his films are a lot of fun.This one is almost like a blueprint for Winner's later box office smash Death Wish in many ways. Both star Charles Bronson as a man whose wife has been raped by thugs and who chooses an eye for an eye style of violent retribution to put matters right. You could also definitely say that Chato's Land also fits into the revisionist western category too – although admittedly with a healthy slice of exploitation content added in for good measure – as it can quite easily be read as another early 70's Vietnam allegory. American might and arrogance comes a cropper against a less well equipped enemy. The invaders have far more gun power but they fail to take into account the environment they enter – the land understood perfectly by the enemy they seek. They commit various atrocities along the way such as setting a village on fire and then finally rape and murder. So there are underlying themes in this one but you don't really need to know any of this historical context to enjoy it because this works just great as a western with plenty of violent action.It's not immediately obvious but this is a Euro Western. It was shot in Spain but with British money. As a result it's maybe no surprise that it resembles the Italian spaghetti westerns in some ways with its amoral characters and violence. Charles Bronson is the star name in the title role. He looks and acts the part just fine but he has virtually no dialogue and the main focus is squarely on the squabbling posse led by Jack Palance. Chato is always on the periphery, which works well as we never know when he will strike. He begins by toying with his pursuers, leading them on a dance but he changes tack after the rape of his wife and murder of his son and seeks bloody revenge. The posse are, therefore, a very unsympathetic group. But they aren't all one dimensionally evil – there are the bad-bad guys but also the good-bad guys. There are a lot of grey areas and the motivation behind each man varies quite a bit. And the order in which they are bumped off is not in the least predictable either.Chato's Land is a pretty straightforward and enjoyable revenge western though. It's sometimes a little rough around the edges it has to be admitted. Occasionally it appears to have been edited with a hacksaw – for instance there is no build up whatsoever to the sudden arrival of the cowboys at Chato's family home – but this isn't really that much of an issue overall and in some ways adds to the raw feel of the movie. It's a film I have seen several times over the years and I always find it to be pretty successful and satisfying.
pheonix2279
Chato's Land is another classic from the legendary Charles Bronson.He was a man who's actions spoke louder than words and this is proof of that fact.Bronson plays Pardon Chato,an apache who shoots a racist sheriff in self defence and is then hunted by a posse led by Quincy Whitmore played brilliantly by Jack Palance.The hunt then turns against the hunters when Chato leads them into apache territory where he is in charge and knows it inside out.The hunters then realise they have underestimated their opponent because in Chatos land Chato is the hunter and Whitmore and his posse are now the hunted.Charles Bronson probably speaks 10 lines at the most and most of his lines are spoken in apache while a lot of focus is on the supporting cast.This was the first of six movies starring Bronson and directed by Michael Winner.Though Winner has become the butt of jokes and criticism in recent years his movies of the 60ties defined the decade and in the 70ties his revenge movies set the bar for all revenge movies that would follow and that should not be forgotten when talking about Michael Winner.This is a gritty,violent revenge story and is an underrated masterpiece.Far better than modern westerns of today.
Tony Bush
Winner's astonishingly harsh western parable is an under-appreciated genre classic. It's a flint-hard and stone cold essay on racial intolerance and man's inhumanity to man. There is zero radiant warmth; the characters and the landscape reflect only savagery and implacable abrasiveness. As the tale unfolds, it becomes clear who the real savages are – and it's not the taciturn half-breed Indian Chato (Bronson) but his hateful and spiritually ugly posse of pursuers led by ex-confederate veteran Quincey (Palance).Throughout the first half of the film, Chato provides his enemies with the means to relinquish their quest, turn back, give up and go home with their lives intact. They choose to pursue their quarry, escalating to violence, murder and rape, even turning upon each other, thus becoming the architects of their own doom. The white man here is depicted as a cruel, racist, intellectually-challenged barbarian full of self-righteous hate. The Indian is a nobler being, at home in the barren landscape, concerned only with survival on his own terms.Goaded into killing a bigoted sheriff in a saloon showdown in the opening minutes, Chato flees back to his homeland. The town notables take the law into their own hands, form a posse and give chase. On the way they pick up supporters from local homesteads, including the Hooker brothers, a trio of grizzled terminally twisted rednecks. Quincey Whitmore, an ex-soldier, leads the gang. For him it is a last chance to succeed in warfare where in the past he had been on the losing side of the confederacy. One more shot at glory, one more campaign against an enemy force. As for the rest, they are driven either by warped ideals of justice, religion, or a desire to impose their perceived masculine superiority over the Indian.Inevitably, as his wife is raped and his brother murdered, Chato turns on his antagonists and proceeds to hunt them down using guerrilla tactics for which they are no match. Capitalising on the terrain to his own advantage, he systematically terrorises and kills his enemies, or sees them turn against and kill each other.Winner's directorial style is primal, basic, perfectly suited to framing the minimalist narrative. For all his unflinching brutality and instinctive capacity to terrorise and kill, Chato is a higher being in all respects compared to the white-trash scum on his case. Bronson is perfectly cast as the monolithic native who simply is a force of nature in his own land.Politically, as with so many movies released at the same time, it is easy to discern parallels with the Vietnam War. America was fighting on the home turf of the Vietnamese and didn't stand a chance. As with Quincey, they failed to understand their enemy outside of bias, assumption and mythology. Quincey makes some pronouncements of what the Indian is, how he thinks and functions and how he behaves. He miscalculates due to his own internal influences and manages to be only half-right on a good day.These days, Michael Winner is portrayed in the media as a jovial buffoon and foodie snob – and in fairness he plays up this persona. It should not be forgotten that Winner was a director of some vision and status, making key films in the swinging sixties that helped define that decade and then mapping out the genre of modern revenge-cinema in the seventies. Chato's Land is a prime example of his work and demands to be viewed in a fresh light by new audiences. The portrayal of human nature as a cruel and vindictive, primordially antagonistic entity has rarely been so tellingly achieved on screen.
