Barbarosa (1982)

Save your money for something good and enjoyable

Fantastic!

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

Karl Westover (Gary Busey) is a runaway Texas farm boy. His brothers want to bring him back but he follows bandit Barbarosa (Willie Nelson) instead. He is conflicted about robbing the poor. A Mexican bandit kills his brothers and shoots Barbarosa. Barbarosa survives and the duo escape with gold. However Karl and Barbarosa are both hunted men.Willie Nelson lacks the acting power to be a feared bandit and Gary Busey's character is way too stupid. It's not cute and funny naivety. It's annoying stupid. I wonder if throwing away the gold is suppose to be comical. It's not bad as a desolate desert western but I want more tension. It moves a bit too slow.

The title role of Barbarosa is played by Willie Nelson and he's a former Texas Ranger turned outlaw who's on the run from his various crimes and from his in-laws who don't like him very much. They resent this Anglo marrying into their family and family patriarch Gilbert Roland got his leg shot off while trying to break up that marriage. He's lost several other family members in trying to kill Nelson to avenge that.But Nelson picks up Gary Busey a farm kid on the run from a feud himself because he accidentally killed his brother-in-law. Busey takes up with Nelson and his outlaw ways and the two become an amiable pair.Judging by the other reviewers Barbarosa seems to have a bit of a following. I wouldn't call it great by any means, still it's certainly entertaining enough for the discriminating western fans.Barbarosa's significance to me is that it is the farewell performance of Gilbert Roland whose career went back six decades into the silent era when he was touted as a would be Valentino successor. His career never quite fit that mold, but he was always a favorite of mine. The part as the family patriarch is not the usual carefree, but tough Gilbert that we usually see. He's an understandably bitter man in this film and it was a good performance to go out on.Western fans won't mind this one and Nelson and Busey have a nice chemistry between them.

There is something genuinely sweet and innocent about Willie Nelson – even though he wasn't even fifty yet while filming Barbarosa he already has the worn, tough, aged face of a man twenty years older than he, and yet he has the eyes of a puppy dog. He is the perfect man to play the legendary thief Barbarosa, a man who is feared by many but whom the audience must like immediately. Gary Busey playing the farm boy Carl seems a little too old for this role (he was pushing late 30's) but is terrific as well.Barbarosa is a light, easy-going film, with some occasional moments of violence. That's really the best praise aside from the actors that I can give it. It's obvious where the film is headed once the two protagonists meet up; every step of the movie has been mapped out. Luckily the film only runs 90 minutes so it's never dragged out. Quite the opposite; Barbarosa tends to dabble in so many little thoughts that they all seem meshed together.Part of the film wants to have that mysticism about Barbarosa, that perhaps he is a ghost who cannot be killed, but the film never plays with it enough. The Spaniards all know of the the legend that they whisper his name with eyes wide as he rides by…and yet nobody in Carl's town mentions Barbarosa once. Barbarosa gets shot by a group of Spaniards who are out looking for him and Carl is the one who has to bury him. It's not surprise when Barbarosa rises from the grave, but even Carl isn't all that shocked. Instead of a 'Wow, you really are invincible!' reaction, we get a 'Oh that's good, you're OK.' Maybe that's the point – that Carl accepts Barbarosa as a person, not a fable or a legend. My problem is that Carl or his town never heard of this man before Carl meets up with him…why not? They're only a few days away apparently – does Barbarosa not like that part of the country – do his people never leave town? Barbarosa is a lot of back-story and not enough of a friendship tale. The scenes with Barbarosa teaching Carl are trite and unbelievable. Carl seems to know too much too soon about being out in the wild.Barbarosa is never exciting enough to be an adventure film and there aren't enough calmer moments for the film to develop the friendship between these characters. Instead of learning about the outlaws, each scene is about them being hunted or hated. You would think these characters would have a great deal to talk about! It's not until the very last bit of the film that we learn why Barbarosa became who he was, and it's no big surprise.The very end of Barbarosa should have worked – it's a obvious gimmick that's tried and true, but the friendship hasn't been solidified like it should and so the ending falls flat. Barbarosa isn't a bad movie, it's that so much of the movie is like the ending - it's a nice try, but it never hits the bullseye.**1/2 out of ****

The second half was an improvement over the first, but I never really could get into the movie. It bounced around too much, taking too long to give the viewer a grasp of what was going on. The Big Bend country was spectacular, but the film was an also ran.