Cathardincu Surprisingly incoherent and boring

Steineded How sad is this?

Beanbioca As Good As It Gets

Chirphymium It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

chaswe-28402 Does every reviewer notice Burt's shiny new teeth ? They do seem to be part of the plot, which is otherwise in need of some cleaning up. Not that this matters, because the action is fairly entertaining anyway, in a shallow kind of way. Not too long. Amusing incidents. Lots of wild shooting, and inventive direction. Interesting pyramidal Mexican scenery. The main female lead is not great, however, and there is not enough of young Buchinsky, although he does play his harmonica. I thought the ending was definitely original, and a surprise, as Burt suddenly seems to turn against the type he's been playing. Perhaps it's because Gary had saved his life, and I guess he owed him. Perhaps his gun was just empty. Why did he replace it in its holster ? I couldn't figure it out. Had he aimed to miss ? What was Gary thinking when he chucked Burt's gun ?

tomsview I first saw this film in 1955; it was the sort of movie I lived for back then. Compared with movies such as "Three Coins in the Fountain" and "Good Morning Miss Dove', which I also saw around the same time, "Vera Cruz" was an island of refuge in a sea of ennui for an eight-year old boy.Now that my movie horizons have broadened a little, most of those old war movies and westerns seem very one dimensional if not totally unwatchable these days.But there are exceptions, and "Vera Cruz" is one of them. After a recent viewing I can appreciate it's panache and even touches of brilliance.The story follows a group of American adventurers in Mexico during the Juarista revolution against the French imposed rule of Emperor Maximillian. Ben Trane (Gary Cooper) teams up with Joe Erin (Burt Lancaster), and it seems they are prepared to help whichever side pays the most money.They initially join forces with the French, but later change to the Juaristas. They have the opportunity of getting away with three million dollars in gold, but Ben Trane becomes emotionally attached to the Juarista cause, while Joe Erin only has an emotional attachment to himself and the money - a showdown is inevitable.It would be hard to accuse the characters in this film of being one-dimensional because they are so over-the-top. They also bring a lightness of touch without which the whole thing would be pretty heavy going. With a witty script, and the perfect cast, director Robert Aldrich hit all the right notes with this film.All the actors playing the French turned the ham knob up high. Ceasar Romero is charming, urbane and duplicitous. Henry Brandon's close-cropped captain is superbly arrogant, and has some great lines with Joe Erin. When he sees Joe greedily tearing into a whole chicken at a banquet, he comments, "Your acquaintance with etiquette amazes me monsieur, I had no idea you knew which hand to use". Of course their association was bound to end badly.As a scheming countess, Denise Darcel femme fatales all over the place, and George Macready as Maximillian delivers yet another variation on his unique brand of cultivated evil - this time with a gnome-like beard.But it's Burt Lancaster who steals the show. With that coiled spring grace and those clipped sentences, he exudes a sense of danger despite overdoing the famous grin in just about every scene.Against all those fireworks, Gary Cooper wisely underplays. He gets the girl at the end -played by beautiful Spanish actress Sarita Montiel - despite looking old enough to be her father plus some.The Jaurista cause is seen in a positive light, and the whole film was shot in Mexico, often with Aztec ruins as a spectacular backdrop. If any group is cast in a bad light it is the American adventurers who are uncouth and bad-natured almost to a man.The action sequences are superbly staged although there is little evidence that the human body contains eight pints of blood - despite the carnage, the whole affair is quite bloodless."Vera Cruz" is a movie without any agenda other than to entertain, and it does that with style. Like most movies of the era, the filmmakers didn't let historical accuracy or cultural sensitivities get in the way of telling a good story.

Steffi_P Back in the 1930s, we had numerous trashy B-Westerns. Then in the 40s the format returned to the serious "A" bracket. By the 1950s the game had been raised even further, and we had sophisticated Oscar-winning Westerns such as High Noon and Shane. It was inevitable there would be some fall-out – some mishmash of high budgets and low values. Say hello to the over-the-top pyrotechnics and shoot-'em-up sensibilities of 1954's Vera Cruz.Let me stress that Vera Cruz is no throwaway cheapie. If half the budget was spent on explosives and sombrero-sporting extras, the other half was spent on securing A-list leading men. It is odd to see such able and prestigious performers as Gary Cooper and Burt Lancaster plodding their way through a leaden script that is one trite excuse for a shoot-out after another. And yet they are by no means miscast. Cooper, with his laconic and world-weary manner is the ideal man-with-a-troubled-past, and he brings a depth and intelligence to the character that is not there in the screenplay. Lancaster is simply fun to watch, with his manly swagger and predatory grin – a clever actor having fun with a lightweight role.This was an early assignment for director Robert Aldrich. Aldrich was always something of a technical show-off, and at this early stage he displays far more showy technique than careful thought. Vera Cruz is full of needless high angles, low angles and other "artsy" shots. While Aldrich would later make a real craft out of oddball shot composition, making the weirdness of the image complement the twisted worlds he portrayed, here it comes across as nothing more than the indulgence of a young director looking to make his mark.However, it is during the action sequences that Aldrich's direction really comes to life. He composes the gunfights out of lots of little bursts – dynamic shots each of which neatly complements and outdoes the one before it. He also proving himself to be a master of giving an impression of violence, sidestepping the strict rules on graphicness that were in place at the time. For example, it would have been unthinkable in 1954 to show a man being shot in the face, and in fact you were not even allowed to show a gun being fired and a person being hit in the same shot. But when we cut from the countess shooting to a rebel falling back clutching at his face, we get all the savagery of the moment without a single glimpse of gore. It is Aldrich's inventive staging of the action, as well as the spot-on editing of Alan Crosland Jr. that makes little flashes of perfection out of the tense revolutionary ambush, a peasant prisoner being hunted like an animal and of course the beautifully extravagant finale.To aficionados of European exploitation cinema (which, incidentally, is where my interest in this glorious medium began), a lot of the trappings in Vera Cruz will doubtless be familiar. The dubious morality of the heroes, the gritty Mexican setting, the completely implausible feats of marksmanship, not to mention the ridiculously high body count – it is all a bit reminiscent of that iconic Italian sub-genre of the 1960s known as the Spaghetti Western. And this is no coincidence – for the films of Sergio Leone, Sergio Corbucci et al were not anti-Westerns, they were more like hyper-Westerns, turning every cliché up to the max and stripping out all the twee niceties of the friendly cowboy flick. The Hollywood ancestors of Spaghetti Westerns are not the thought-provokers like High Noon, Shane or The Searchers, as is sometimes believed. No, their true predecessors are the frenzied no-brainers like Vera Cruz.

kellyadmirer I had a junior high school teacher once, Mr. MacGowan, who asked us to list the qualities a man should have. Others quickly piped up with "tough," "strong," "fearless," the usual. But when I said "smart," I faced open opposition. Old Mr. MacGowan, though, nodded and wrote it on the blackboard. "Vera Cruz" illustrates the point, being smart beats being tough any day.This is a terrific film about Maximilian Mexico. Featuring Gary Cooper at his most laconic and Burt Lancaster at his most engaging, along with a wonderful supporting cast, this is one of the classic westerns that any fan of the genre or of the stars should see.As usual in Maximilian films ("Undefeated," "Indio Black"), there's gold at stake, and everyone wants it. This film, though, has a humanity that the other films (and, in fact, most westerns) completely lack. Everybody - and I do mean everybody - is plotting and scheming and figuring who they absolutely have to cut in and who they safely can cut out, like an old-fashioned "Survivor." It's all sleazy in a good way. Everybody tries to outsmart everybody else, but in the end, one of them is smarter than them all and makes the only decision about the gold that makes sense.Which isn't to say that everything in the script is original. Cooper plays the usual western loner who comes in and alters everybody's destiny, blazing a path for Clint Eastwood a decade later. Lancaster plays the usual local gang leader who sees the newcomer as both a new challenge and an opportunity. How they resolve their varying motivations and influence on each other, and acknowledge their temporary usefulness to each other, forms the core of the tale.The most interesting and, indeed, idiosyncratic moment comes when the two dusty outsiders meet the Emperor, played marvelously (as always) by George "Paths of Glory" Macready, at his fancy court. The two gunmen and the Emperor have a shooting competition at which the Emperor actually does quite well, though of course he ultimately loses. It's a marvelous moment, with the setting quite European but Cooper and Lancaster wandering in and chewing as much scenery as they can. Cesar Romero overplays the Emperor's grinning henchman as only he could, the effect of his natural exuberance heightened by the comparison with the tightly restrained Cooper, Lancaster and Macready.There's an engaging story to tell, and it actually follows real events remarkably closely. Denise Darcel and Sara Montiel are around to look beautiful, and Ernest Borgnine has a good moment or two. Even Charles Bronson shows up to uphold the "tough guy" standard. But all along you know who has to win in the end, who has to get the gold, and how it all must end. Even with the lack of surprise, it makes for a terrific ride.