Bandolero! (1968)

I wanted to like it more than I actually did... But much of the humor totally escaped me and I walked out only mildly impressed.

The plot isn't so bad, but the pace of storytelling is too slow which makes people bored. Certain moments are so obvious and unnecessary for the main plot. I would've fast-forwarded those moments if it was an online streaming. The ending looks like implying a sequel, not sure if this movie will get one

It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

"You robbed a bank? .. You? .. Mace?""Well, Dee, the bank was there ... and I was there ... and there wasn't very much of anybody else there ... and it just seemed like the thing to do."As the opening credits roll after a brief prologue, many viewers will immediately recognize the iconic whistling theme music of 1968's Bandolero! So begins this tale of two brothers who have drifted separately into the old west after the last days of the civil war. At it's heart, Bandolero is a story of needlessly losing one's way, yet still managing to find a measure of redemption.Jimmy Stewart and Dean Martin star as Dee and Mace, the Bishop brothers, in their only big screen team-up. Stewart is a pleasure to watch as he absolutely owns a script very well-suited to his particular charms. Raquel Welch continues to break her Hollywood sex kitten image in a early dramatic role, beginning a string of western film vehicles (100 Rifles, Hannie Caulder). George Kennedy portrays July Johnson, a 'decent' sheriff in pursuit of more than just the outlaws. Larry McMurtry paid homage to this character in Lonesome Dove, giving his lawman the same name. Anyone who has viewed both films will note that the July Johnson of these films share much more than a common name. Both are very similar in persona and motivation. Dean Martin as usual, easily slips into his rawhide. The supporting cast includes many of the usual suspects you would expect to find in a Texas border town. Will Geer, Denver Pyle, John Mitchum, Harry Carey, and Dub Taylor all appear.Bandolero was filmed in the last heydays of western movie making, as Hollywood genre films began their shift from the wild west into the deep reaches of outer space. And that's a shame, as this film will still be remembered long after many a space opera have crumbled into celluloid dust. With inspirational outdoor cinematography, and featuring the incredible Alamo Village set (built for 1960's The Alamo), Bandolero! is a film deserved of it's exclamation point.

This is an underrated Western that gets no critical respect. This is because the director Andrew McLaglen came from a TV background and took orders from Duke in a series of late Wayne Westerns. However, he also did some above average work, including both Shenandoah and Bandolero. This scored a 6 out of 10 in my IMDb rating, which is very good and tallied 15 points in my ranking system, a very good score.Here's what I thought was good about this movie: The co-leads, Dean Martin and James Stewart are great in this. James Stewart is just a wonderful comedic actor. It's a shame Anthony Mann didn't have a sense of humor. He underused Stewart in his 1950's Westerns. In addition to Stewart's wonderful part at the beginning as a fake hangman, there are a number of back and forths between he and Martin later in the movie that are as good as the dialog between Stewart and Widmark in "Two Rode Together".George Kennedy is another very underrated actor and like Dean Martin, he's an underrated comedic actor. Kennedy really fills up the screen like few actors can.I admit I've had a life long crush on Raquel Welch. She looks great in this and her character has quite a bit of depth. I bought the romantic subplot between her and Martin. Hostage/captor thing, you know.McLaglen does a nice job of keeping the story moving. They don't get stuck in Val Verde.There are extended location shoots in Glen Canyon in Utah that are absolutely stunning.Excellent use of Civil War and Mexican themes.Good music scoreAs mentioned, good use of comic relief throughout.There were a number of things that kept this movie from being better: There was basically no heavy. The Mexican bandidos were almost completely undeveloped. This severely undercut the dramatic tension in the story, especially since there was so much humor. At some point, humor can cease to be counterpoint to relieve dramatic tension and a movie becomes a comedy. This almost happens to Bandalero and is one reason why it's not taken seriously by critics.The night camp studio sets were very artificial looking.The ending felt abrupt and contrived.The body count in the final shoot 'em up scene was unnecessarily high. The bandidos are pretty ridiculously stereotyped. Maybe that's why they didn't shoot in Mexico. They wouldn't let them.More on the final shootout, McLaglen commits the cardinal sin of having the stupid brown skinned bandidos ride around endlessly out in the open, making themselves perfect targets, while the white people pick them off from well protected hiding spots. Of course, 20 bandidos ride in, 40 are killed, and 20 ride out. They run like rabbits when their "jefe" is killed. All implausible and ridiculousFinally, exactly what happened to the real hangman? Stewart must have killed him. Inconsistent with his character.

If you're Catholic and you grew up in Spokane, Washington in the 60s and 70s, then there is a chance you used to read the Spokane Diocese's newspaper, The Inland Register. In it, movies would be reviewed not on their stories or acting but on their moral content. If a movie received an "M.O.", morally-objectionable, you were not to see the movie.For a future "fallen" Catholic like myself, the worse the rating in the IR, the better! I don't know for sure, but I'm betting Andrew V. McLaglen's Bandolero received the kiss of moral death by the folks at Lourdes Cathedral. What would have been exciting and appealing to a 17 year old is now viewed as repulsive trash, with two Old West recidivists (Jimmy Stewart and Dean Martin) running from the law (George Kennedy) with hostage Raquel Welch (Dow Corning) in tow.As Judith Crist used to say "the blood flows like Chianti" in Bandolero. There are no good guys except for Kennedy and his deputy Andrew Prine, and they're almost-but-not-quite cognitively impaired. Martin is too far gone for redemption as he slaughters his way across the desert while falling in love with non-actress Welch. His crew oozes with rapists and murderers, but we're supposed to cut Dino some slack because at least he feels a twinge of remorse for his deeds.Then there's Martin's brother, Stewart, who we are expected to believe is the better of the two brothers. That's a little hard to accomplish when he meets up with a hangman-for-hire and, offscreen, ices the poor shlub without so much as a sigh.By the end of movie, the bad guys and the good guys have teamed up to kill other badder guys, and the sand of a Mexican town is fairly spongy with blood.Bandolero is a nauseating mess, better left at the nearest distribution center of Netflix, unless you're hooked on Chianti.

I saw this film in the theater in 1971 on a co-bill with ESCAPE FROM THE PLANET OF THE APES (Central-Passaic,NJ) Loved it then and think it still holds up. Raquel Welch's performance never thrilled me in this film and her entire role was either looped by another actress, or she went in and looped all her own dialoge in post-production (I suspect the latter).Dean Martin trades in his tux for a leather holster, and although he's not playing the most convincing outlaw in the world, I always loved the way he portrayed his role here as the "bad egg" brother of Jimmy Stewart who longs to meet a fine woman and turn his life around.The trouble here is that he falls for a prostitute peasant girl (Raquel Welch) Some guys have all the luck!James Stewart is superb as usual, as is the great character actor Will Geer (they played opposite one another in another western classic, WINCHESTER '73) I love the scene between them in the cave where Stewart says "apologize, Mr.Chaney or I'll blow your head off" (words to that effect) Jerry Goldsmith also provides his usual excellent score. A great 20th Century-Fox widescreen film made in the days just before the Zanucks left the studio and the film industry started taking a gradual but steady morality nose-dive.