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4.8/10
Senior Film Conservator
A definitive 4.8/10 rating for a film that redefined the boundaries of cult cinema. Fighting Caballero remains a cornerstone of transgressive art.
If you like your westerns with plenty of dust, guys in big hats looking angry, and plots that move faster than the horses, sure. If you need a movie that makes sense or has, you know, actual acting, skip it. It’s for the folks who get a kick out of finding these little forgotten relics from the era when every week had a new cowboy on the screen.
There is this moment about halfway through where someone is just standing by a fence, and for like ten seconds, the camera just refuses to cut away. It feels like the director went to get a sandwich. I loved it.
Everything in this movie looks like it was filmed inside a sandbox. The plot is about a mining operation, so naturally, people spend a lot of time yelling about rocks and claim-jumping. It feels a bit like watching a long episode of Small Town Sheriff, just with more spurs clanking around.
The dialogue is mostly just people telling other people to get off their land. It’s repetitive, but there is something charming about how blunt everyone is. Nobody is trying to be profound here. They just want their gold back.
It’s nowhere near as intense as The Escape, but it isn't trying to be. It’s just a scrappy little thing that wants to get through its runtime without breaking anything. Sometimes the sound cuts out for a split second, or a shadow from the boom mic pops in. You just gotta roll with it.
I caught myself wondering if the guys playing the bad guys were actually having fun, or if they were just really hungry. There is a certain crude energy to the whole production that I kind of missed while watching more polished stuff lately. It’s messy. It’s not great. But it exists.