100 Rifles (1969)

The acting in this movie is really good.

It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

100 RIFLES is a Hollywood western shot in Spain with a good little cast. Made in 1969 it features a little ultra-violence in the WILD BUNCH style although is much inferior when compared to the Peckinpah movie. However, it's still quite watchable and has an interesting story about a bank robber, a bounty hunter, a female gunslinger and a cruel Mexican general. The story favours larger-than-life characters and action and generally works very well, even if it isn't top tier. Burt Reynolds plays an irascible character with plenty of charm while Jim Brown is another imposing tough guy with a heart. Raquel Welch certainly grabs the attention with THAT infamous shower scene but the tragic Soledad Miranda is equally entrancing in her first-scene cameo. I wouldn't call 100 RIFLES a classic but it certainly does the job for western lovers.

If you never once use your gray-matter during the 110 minutes of Tom Gries 100 Rifles, you may escape with nothing more than a feeling that Gries, who made the dull, episodic, and beautifully acted (by most of the characters) Will Penny, decided to throw out the performance aspect and replace it with lots and lots and lots more killing and stabbing and dynamiting.Just a feeling, mind you.100 Rifles is drive-in movie trash. You really can't get mad at it because it is, if you pardon the cliché, 100 Clichés. Fernando Lamas plays a Mexican general, and plays him like Michael Ansara in one of the Magnificent Seven sequels, like Ansara played his Mexican colonel a little like the fat officer in The Wild Bunch, and on and on.Jim Brown is big (like the trees in my yard).Burt Reynolds shows flashes of the humor and action-oriented charisma that would propel him to superstardom.But, it's Raquel Welch, her awful Mexican accent notwithstanding, who gains the viewer's greatest affection. There are indications of an actress here. She occasionally seems tender and likable. I always found her too Barbie Doll-like--boobs, butt, big-hair, and hard as a rock (not me, you nitwit, her), but somewhere along the way, parked in amongst some of that killin' and maimin', I realized I wasn't cringing every time she was on screen.Oh, well. I first heard about this flick some 20 years ago. I finally watched it, uncut, on YouTube. Now, I've seen it. Whoop.I wonder if I ever see Kansas City Bombers, Welch will turn in a fairly good performance there, too.That's sarcasm.

In 1966, future cult starlet Soledad Miranda traded her artistic life for family life and took a two-year break from performing. She decided to return to cinema when offered a role in 100 Rifles. Soledad appears at the beginning of the movie in a scene with Burt Reynolds. They are in a hotel and are lovers; Soledad demands money from him, but he refuses and it gets a little rough. Their fracas on the hotel balcony (where Soledad is topless) is witnessed by all the townspeople. A Spanish journalist who saw the film in London wrote that Soledad's "charms" had nothing to envy of Raquel Welch's, and begged the Spanish censors to let her countrymen see and admire all that God had given her!

After a quick perusal of some of the other comments I wonder if 'plot' or 'acting ability' were even intended. The attractions were Raquel Welch (for the guys to drool over) and Burt Reynolds (for the gals to drool over) with Hall-of-Fame fullback Jim Brown thrown in for good measure and a story which makes for an entertaining shoot 'em up if you're into that sort of thing. Setting the whole thing in politically unstable Mexico in the turn of the century gives the story an air of plausibility, especially with Eric Braeden being added as a German adviser. (Also more eye candy for the ladies.) Come to think of it, it's not balanced; the ladies have Reynolds, Brown, Braeden, and Fernado Lamas to look at; the guys only have Welch. I can't comment on the historical backdrop the way I do with a lot of my other comments because I know close to nothing about what was going on there at the time. I've heard of Pancho Villa, but that's about it. Most of these actors probably never got to really show if they could act since their sex appeal sort of became the secret of their success. Did anybody ever coach Welch as an actress? I wouldn't bet on it. They'd just dress her up in an outfit that made the most of her natural attributes, tell her to look sexy, and roll the camera. At least, that's my prejudiced notion. However, I know Welch was at least partly Hispanic, so a Mexican girl like in this movie and in Bandolero! may have come a bit more naturally.