The Milagro Beanfield War (1988)

That was an excellent one.

Such a frustrating disappointment

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

An underrated film now some 28yrs. old that provides a cute story line, certain situation comedy, some dramatic scenes, an absolutely outstanding award-winning haunting musical score by Dave Grusin. Adding is beautiful Landscape photographic shots of New Mexico during the "Golden Hour" (as known to photographers) which occurs on sunny days one hour before Sunset, reflecting in various New Mexico landscape locations. A film you will end up watching multiple times. The Cast interacts nicely in the film. Also great Directing by Redford enabling conflict, alternative answers. The very small, undeveloped, and financially poor town is up against big power, big money, and typical crooked political insiders forcing their ways through various means. However, the towns people come together stemming from the planting of a small Beanfield by a down and out local resident out of work, struggling to provide for he and his family. Various situations and dialogue make this film humorous. Together they overcome the effects of Big Business, Politics, and the pressures against olde' Milagro.

The Milagro Beanfield War is a fascinating, very entertaining film that surprised me when I found out how little known this film was even though it was directed by Robert Redford, whom is a very prolific actor and director. I liked how this film has a penchant for pretty sunrises and sunsets and I feel like it adds to the film. Is this a political film? It could be because it certainly has political overtones, but I was more entertained than politically guided with this film.Robert Redford's film is about a small town in New Mexico where it's predominated by Hispanics and Catholics. There is this one man named Joe Mondragon who illegally uses water to irrigate his beanfield and does what he can to protect it against the interests of big business.This film surprised me by having the acting it's best asset. I haven't heard of half of the cast, but they do a great job. There are several I've heard of such as John Heard, Christopher Walken, and Daniel Stern and I think they do a pretty good job. To be honest, I thought Stern would be funnier here since he is known as a funnyman.Overall, The Milagro Beanfield War is a vastly underrated film. It can be pretty funny at times without being too overly dramatic. It takes a while to get hooked into the film, but eventually you'll not want this film not to be ovefr. Not only does it have a good story, it's pretty to look at thanks to some fine cinematography and has a wonderful score by Dave Grusin. I think more people should get to see this film because it's very good. I rate this film 9/10.

The biggest name associated with The Milagro Beanfield War is its director Robert Redford. He does not step in front of the camera at any time during this film. Instead Redford assembled and directed a capable cast of players in a colorful and quaint tale about fighting city hall.But it's not municipal, but the state government itself in Milagro, New Mexico's struggle with developer Richard Bradford. Their tiny little town has been selected by him with the backing of New Mexico's governor M. Emmet Walsh for a resort development. The first part of said development is the construction of a small dam that stops water from getting to the beanfields of the Chicano farmers who have lived there and scratched a living from the soil for many generations. Bradford's plans will result in a kind of rural gentrification as these farmers will not be able to live on property that will increase in value as the taxes go up on it as well. But when Chick Vennera punches a hole in the dam and irrigates his beanfield that starts a populist type war in Milagro. Vennera becomes a symbol and rallying point for the Chicano farmers against the Anglo developers. Caught in the middle of all this is the town magistrate Ruben Blades who sympathizes with Vennera's struggle.Vennera has some other allies in community activists John Heard and Sonia Braga and visiting sociology student Daniel Stern. But Bradford sends his ace troubleshooter Christopher Walken in and he plays kind of rough.Redford directed The Milagro Beanfield War with a light touch, but still made his points well. Robert Redford's reputation as one who has devoted himself to conservation issues is well known and this film gives him quite the venue. The Milagro Beanfield War won an Oscar in the only category it was nominated in for Best Original Music Score. The score utilized some traditional Mexican folk themes and the arrangements are quite nice.So is the cinematography done completely on location in New Mexico, in the west that Robert Redford would like to see more of preserved and ordinary people just given a chance to make a living.

This movie was very powerful in the sense that it showed how much as Americans we value real estate. The Devine plan for Milagro was to put up a resort, a lake, and a golf course; and by doing so it had no regards for the native population of Milagro. They had been there for hundreds of years, but the town had changed during that time. In the past years, poverty had become noticeable in their personalities. It had always been their style of life, but now it dictated how people acted. This is a classic example of rich people wanting to buy up all the land, so they offer money to all the land owners to buy them out. As far as who held the key to the plot of the story, it was Sheriff Montoya. Although he was dealing with Ladd Devine, he ended up staying true to his native people by defending them. Twice, he stepped in during life/death situations and prevented total chaos from breaking out. Also, as far as playing their role very well, Christopher Walken did a great job playing Kryil Montana, the loose cannon, stop at nothing, wild-west vigilante out to get Mondragon. It was interesting to see how much pride Montana took in finally arresting Mondragon, but how he still had a level of respect for him when he let him go. Ruby Archuleta was the activist who made this all happen. She took a stand to defend her native people, even when at times, they didn't understand what was happening to them. She got the injustice into the hands of the right man, Charlie Bloom, an ex-lawyer and civil rights activist. He stood up for the town that wasn't even his own and printed the news about everything that was going on. It was interesting to see that some people in the town were willing to let the development happen. The US Forest Service rangers, whose families had been in Milagro all their life, were willing to turn their backs on their people and got paid off by Devine. This created most of the conflict in the movie because the first scene in which people actually pointed their guns at each other involved the rangers. They had taken Joe's cow onto national land, so they could detain it, therefore costing him $100 to retrieve it. Well everyone knew that this was by design, and the old men in Milagro were there to defend Joe all the way. Luckily Sheriff Montoya stepped in, or we would be looking at a whole different plot line. The other incident which made the movie into what it was involved Montana buying up all of Bloom's local papers and trying to burn them. But while this was going on, a gust of wind picked up all the newspapers and spread them all over town for everyone to read. As far as social justice movies go, this would go somewhere at the top of the list. It was a little different than I would have expected, in that I expected Devine to just buy Mondragon out of his property. All Joe was looking for was a decent job to pay off his bills and feed his family, so if Devine was willing to just offer Mondragon a lucrative settlement, then this wouldn't have happened. The only thing that would have made this movie better would to have been to see Bloom go to court as a civil attorney and make the whole state of New Mexico aware of the injustices that were occurring.