Alvarez Kelly (1966)

Good movie but grossly overrated

When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

a film so unique, intoxicating and bizarre that it not only demands another viewing, but is also forgivable as a satirical comedy where the jokes eventually take the back seat.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

Classic, Classic, Classic! Yeah, you can complain about being a bit slow nearly 50 years later, but what movie from that time wasn't. This movie is loosely based on Hampton's and General Rosser's Cattle Raid. Not filmed in Virginia, but I am from near Richmond and played as a child on some of the land the actual raid crossed over and it has the same feel. Holden and Widmark both hit home runs, hard to tell which is better. Widmark has the southern Virginia accent down pat, he sounds like a couple of my uncles which were about his age. The score and the cinematography just add to the ambiance. There are some slight imperfections with the script, but the strengths of this film tower over it's shortcomings.

This is a true story of the civil war. It is said that when Gen. Grant found out what had happened to the cattle, the words that he uttered could not be repeated orally. I could just imagine what the good general would have said if he saw this mess of a film.Bill Holden is Kelly. The North and the South both want his sheep to feed people during the civil war. The south, led by Gen. Richard Widmark, in a totally phony southern accent, go as far to kidnap Kelly. Widmark shoots off a finger and threatens a finger a day until Kelly complies.The shocking thing is this awful picture is that by the end of it, Kelly plays along with the south. Widmark is willing to forget that Kelly has allowed his girl friend, (Janice Rule) to flee from Richmond.This film is uneven at best. There are far too many questions to ask, but why bother since it's a real clinker anyway.

I love the movie itself; however, it does seem to keep the Civil War alive even though the event was closed out 142 years ago. I saw the movie while attending a Southwestern military academy back in the late 1970s. Some of the cadets from the Southern states like Texas didn't like it when a Union sniper up in a tree shot one of the Confederate calvary men who was escorting the cattle. After the Union sniper was brought down by Colonel Rossiter (Richard Widmark), they chapped while those of us from the Northern states booed it. One of my teachers at the school kept saying that the South will rise again. If people from the South don't like the U.S. military because they lost the war, then maybe they should not join the military because then they would have to wear the blue uniforms of the United States Air Force, the Marine Corp dress blues), and the Army (the Old Presidential Guard dress blues) since they called the Northern Soldiers "blue bellies."

This film is a real, merit-less time-waster. Wm. Holden (passed away drunk, how un-Christian-like) is too old for the role that should have gone to an athletic actor twenty years younger, although the crafty producers got their money's worth action-wise from the old man, considering Holden was an alcoholic and chain smoker! Widmark is all over the map playing a non-Christian Confederate soldier something or other, but I did enjoy O'Neal as the Union Capt., or is it Sgt? Anyways, the film drags until the rousing climax, at which point I thought another movie had come on. The writing could have presented a clearer story about the moral God (good) versus the Devil (impure) conflict inherent in a nation when it goes to war against itself, but that worthy idea is never fleshed out.