Joe Kidd (1972)

This movie is the proof that the world is becoming a sick and dumb place

A Major Disappointment

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

Much Talent Came Together for this Early Seventies Western Riding the Revival that Started in the Mid-Sixties with The Sergio Leone Trilogy and "The Wild Bunch" (1969). Clint Eastwood, Director John Sturges, and Writer Elmore Leonard are Not At There Best.The Result is a Tepid, Turgid, Tale of Land Rights and Oppressed Mexicans. A Good Supporting Cast Including John Saxon, Robert Duvall, and Don Stroud who Always Plays a "Good" Sleazebag. The Cinematography is by Bruce Surtees and the Score from Lalo Schifrin. So Why is the Thing So Dull? It's Anybody's Guess, but it is. It is Dumb from the Start and Never Gets Any Smarter, Culminating in One of the Silliest Train Rides Ever. The Dialog is Not Snappy, the Violence is Ho-Hum, and Eastwood, Never a Great Actor, is Awful. Once Again Relying on Squints and Macho Speak.The Movie Looks Good but the Movie isn't Good. It's Standard Stuff and Everyone Involved, from Top to Bottom has Done Much Better Elsewhere. A Dud.

Wealthy landowner (Robert Duvall) wants to hire cavalier former bounty Joe Kidd (Clint Eastwood) to guide a posse searching for a Mexican revolutionary (John Saxon). Kidd declines but after his ranch is raided by the Mexicans, he joins up for vengeance. Despite being directed by John Sturges, written by Elmore Leonard, and starring Clint Eastwood, this one's limp and boring. Clint brings some charm to the part but the script doesn't give him a lot to work with. John Saxon as a Mexican is pretty ridiculous but you can roll with it. Robert Duvall does alright with what he has.John Sturges had made some classic westerns years before this but something was obviously missing by this time. The biggest problem is that it's all just so predictable. You know before you watch one second of it what the characters will do. They are cardboard clichés with no standout personalities so I couldn't care less what happened to them.

Clint Eastwood plays Joe Kidd, a former bounty hunter in the American Southwest who is approached by a wealthy landowner(Robert Duvall) to help him fight a band of Mexicans(led by John Saxon) who are irate that their land claims have been denied(destroyed in a courtroom fire apparently) and so have taken up arms. Duvall really wants the land for himself, and to Joe's dismay, will go to any lengths to get it...Ho-hum western with a good cast that can only do so much with such routine material, despite some good location photography and train crash finale, there is very little else to recommend this unmemorable western.

There was a time when Clint Eastwood was almost exclusively known as a Western star. From his first major success, the TV series Rawhide, to the Sergio Leone directed Man With No Name trilogy of films, the Western genre was Eastwood's bread and butter into the 1970s. With his marquee name, well respected director John Sturges at the helm, and novelist Elmore Leonard scripting, the 1972 release Joe Kidd would seem likely to be another feather in Eastwood's Western cap. However, even with the best cooks in the kitchen, sometimes you can't quite make a top caliber meal, and that sums up Joe Kidd well, falling short of being a great, or frankly, even good Western.As Joe Kidd opens, the titular hero (Eastwood), is sleeping off a drunk and disorderly arrest in the town jail. When he is hauled in front of the Judge to have sentence passed the proceedings are interrupted by the arrival of Luis Chalma (John Saxon), a Mexican landowner who is fed up with the U.S. government failing to recognize his and his compatriots land claims from when the Spanish ruled the land. Chalma attempts to kidnapped the Judge but Joe foils the plot. Soon, land baron Frank Harlan (Robert Duvall) arrives and offers Kidd a deal: he will pay him $500 to help him hunt down and kill Chalma to stop him from raising questions about the land. At first Joe declines, but when he returns home to find friends assaulted by Chalma as he left the area, Joe changes his find and joins the hunt for Chalma with Harlan and his henchmen, but Joe soon realizes that may have been a mistake.Joe Kidd is the Western genre largely on autopilot. Many elements from countless other westerns are there with little deviation from the norm: a small, one street town, a gruff hero with little penchant for words and a ruthless, money grubbing villain interested in keeping the small man down. As the film unfolds, there is little about the proceedings that stretch the genre much at all. Leonard tries to introduce a small variation by suggesting the possibility that Chalma, who more or less fills the standard role of the heavy early on, is actually in the right with his desire to have his land claims observed, but Joe Kidd does little to flesh this out, it merely serves as a plot device when the script requires one. Joe Kidd doesn't push any boundaries or stretch any horizons, staying very firmly on well tread territory.Eastwood portrays his rather typical role as Joe Kidd, a man of few words. Eastwood could essay this role in his sleep by this point in his career, and there is little in Joe Kidd that would cause him to move beyond his comfort zone. Robert Duvall plays a at times slimy villain, but there is really little about Harlan that makes him stand out from the normal pack of Western villains. He's greedy, mean and nasty, but that is about all we learn about him. John Saxon takes on a similar type of role that other actors such as Eli Wallach had realized before: a white American actor cast in the role of a Hispanic Mexican. He gives a capable performance as Chalma, but nothing exemplary. Like the other leads, Saxon is held back by the thin script, there isn't a lot of meat on the bones of Chalma for him to sink his teeth into.Standardized genre films can sometimes provide reasonably entertaining vehicles, but Joe Kidd is so lackluster and rote, and also lacking much in the way of suspense or action, that it can't really manage to summon up enough entertainment value to help transcend it's boilerplate plotting and characters to make it stand out. It is unfortunate with such a roster of talent behind and in front of the camera that something better couldn't have been created, but alas Joe Kidd is a much lesser entry in Eastwood's Western canon.