Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia

Year: 1974
Genre: Crime Thriller
Directed: Sam Peckinpah
Stars: Warren Oates, Isela Vega, Robert Webber, Gig Young, Helmut Dantine, Emilio Fernandez, Kris Kristofferson, Chano Urueta, Donnie Fritts, Jorge Russek, Chalo Gonzalez, Don Levy, Janine Maldonado
Production: Estudios Churubusco Azteca

In a small provincial town outside of Mexico City, the daughter (Maldonado) of infamous crime lord El Jefe (Fernandez) is being interrogated. It is discovered that she is pregnant thus starting a desperate search for the father Alfredo Garcia, a former confidante to El Jefe. To sweeten the pot, El Jefe offers a million dollars to whomever finds Garcia and retrieves the man's head. In enters our protagonist Bennie (Oates), an American who has lost himself in a bottle of tequila and is aching to escape the squalor that surrounds him. He's informed of the bounty by two dispassionate hitmen (Young and Webber) who enter the bar he works at. He finds out through his hooker girlfriend (Vega) that Alfredo Garcia died in a car accident weeks prior, thus retrieving the head of an already dead man seems like a walk in the park. Only it's not, and as you can imagine from a Sam Peckinpah joint chaos ensues.

Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia is an unpleasant movie by design. The movie is designed to coax the viewer into a dark crime-ridden netherworld laced together with fatalism and nihilism. At the center of it are Bennie and Elita, the prostitute who agrees to take a road trip with him to the border. Their relationship is uncommonly sweet given the circumstances; a feeling which doesn't last long. Bennie finds out Elita had been sleeping with Garcia as well, and while he shrugs it off and continues their journey, you can tell he's miffed.

At the time of the film's release, the movie was a critical and box office bomb. Many critics were dumbstruck by the narrative disjointedness, the shocking central plot and the chintzy production value. Regardless there were some who found the movie to be a quixotic masterpiece and as years passed, it has gained a critical following. Roger Ebert believed the film to be autobiographical at least in theme. Sam Peckinpah was infamous for his drunken tirades, his scuffles with various actors and actresses and his dealings with the studio. Alfredo Garcia is the only film Peckinpah got final cut thus the movie must be about the auteur's growing frustration with the film-making process.

That's all well and good but would the average filmgoer be poised to enjoy this film which, while bloody provides little in the way of traditional entertainment? Will audiences be receptive to long periods of subjugated topless women staring into the middle distance? How about extended periods of Bennie talking with the disjointed head in the style of "Revenger's Tragedy" or a rape scene that disturbs not because of its visceral intensity but because of its woebegone normalcy. Would you still watch then?

As I said this film is unpleasant by design; thus it's hard to give a movie a bad review for accomplishing what it set out to do. It does so with economy and a surplus of style which you can take out of it what you must. Yet those looking for an intense shoot'em up in the vogue of Smokin' Aces (2006) (which took all the movie's style and none of its substance), will be disappointed. This is art cinema at its most foul. Thus the only people who will end up enjoying Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia are the very same critics that gave the movie a second chance.

Final Grade: C