Wonderful character development!

everything you have heard about this movie is true.

It is both painfully honest and laugh-out-loud funny at the same time.

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

Warren Oates gives one of the most curious performances of the American cinema of the 1970s, not just of his career, with Cockfighter. He plays Frank, a man who doesn't speak (he chooses not to following a bad bet made by bragging) and spends his life taking his prized roosters off to fight in battles as bloody and vicious as anything in a gladiator ring. He also has a love interest, but not much time for that even though, yes, she does love him and he may indeed love her. He's always on the move for the next fight, and when he loses, sometimes by boasting and getting drunk, he just gets right back up with his expression of "well, let's just do this" see-sawing between true determination and respectable glee.There's not many movies that feature cockfighting, and perhaps there is good reason: it is, in fact, illegal in nearly all (if not just all) of the US, it would be difficult to put on today without, of course, animal control people on the set. This is a good thing, if only for the sanity of a cast and crew that would have to watch countless chickens get killed. But the goal of Monte Hellman's film is to take an eye on this hick-centric environment, with people cast who likely had never been in a movie but, more than likely, handled their share of chickens in their lifetimes. It's moody, but it never calls attention to itself. Hellman only gets really "stylish" in the cockfighting scenes, where, as if a precursor to Scorsese's Raging Bull, we see it shot in furious, machine-gun-fire montage, with close-ups of the C-words in mid-air and pecking furiously with wings flapping about. There's even some slow-motion in one of the scenes where Frank's bird loses.It comes about as close as could be ever allowed for visual poetry with these fighting fowl, and this is to Hellman's credit. But the director is also taking a relaxed-yet-concentrated form in following Warren Oates. This is a character who is sure of what he wants, though isn't always the best judge of character or knowing in the right way to do it. He'll take a bet wherever it might lay, and he can take a fight himself, like with the angry boy in the barn, or can hold his own up against a sly but mean dude played by Harry Dean Stanton. Oates plays all of this with the same ease and unlikely charm and, paradoxically, haunting demeanor that one also saw in 1974's Alfredo Garcia. It's amazing to see a case where a script provides a character who doesn't speak precisely because he doesn't have to (at one point he writes something on a notepad for his partner-in-cockfighting, but it's for something crucial).And lest this not be a super-serious film about Cockfighting- as the episode of Seinfeld proved with Kramer's "Little Jerry Seinfeld" rooster, there needs to be some reflection and satire- a few scenes are very funny. Chief among them is a scene where some of the cockfighters are in a hotel room, only to be the victims of a hold-up by men masked with Presidents faces. There's a big laugh once they all leave- by the men who were held up- until the men come back to take a wad of bills one of the men held up after they left. Who does that? Only in a Hellman film, I suppose.

This Roger Corman produced movie about the dubious sport of cockfighting probably occupies similar ground to Cannibal Holocaust in a way. They both exploit animal violence for their goals but those goals stretch beyond mere schlocky entertainment (and I have to say that CH is no more hypocritical than the people who condemn it and then chow down on burgers).True there are actual cockfighting scenes in the movie and real animals were harmed and killed and the fights themselves are presented in a very grim way, so animal lovers are advised to stay away. But Cockfighter is also a Monte Hellman movie and not content with wadding its way through schlock. It's similar in many ways to his masterpiece Two-Lane Blacktop in that it is an understated character study disguised as something else (in Blacktop's case a road movie, here a movie about cockfighting), introvert and contemplative without any pretense and stripped of all fat.Warren Oates almost totally silent performance is great, relying on glances and gestures and understated enough to suck you in his character's tormented psyche like a Lon Chaney of 70's hardboiled cinema. His character is reminiscent of the G.T.O. he played in Blacktop three years earlier, once again a drifter, a man that has fallen out with society and himself and is now trying to come to terms with life in his own way. As is true for other Hellman movies and his great talent, things are never spelled out but are left vague as if incomplete but still carrying all the meaning they're supposed to carry. The puzzling ending is another example of this and I think the movie is better off because of it.Newcomers to Hellman's movies might wanna start elsewhere and work their way to Cockfighter. This is still characteristic of his work and Oates is in top form, but it's not as good as Blacktop although maybe more accessible. A must-see for fans of Sam Peckinpah too.

"Cockfighter" is not an easy movie. It doesn't have one of those carbon-copy scripts that you can write like cheap romance novels. It doesn't have characters that cater to what the stars think will make them look good. There is no spoon-feeding here.Just re-released for sale on tape (and DVD), this film is now available again for those who like to watch a movie that honestly takes you someplace that few of us have ever been. Warren Oates plays a character who lives by a moral code much like the people in the pulp westerns and detective stories -- a man's honor is shown by his actions, and his willingness to see his convictions through to whatever end may come. After letting his pride destroy his chance of winning a high honor amongst cockfighters, he takes a vow of silence that will last until he earns that honor.While the scenes of actual cockfights can be distressing, they are essential to showing the viewer the main character's struggle as well as his obsession. When the character's love interest is added to the equation, the story takes on an epic quality formerly reserved for tales of a knight trying to win the love of his lady and the respect of his peers.Perhaps that may be giving the film too much credit, but I don't think so. While there are plenty of exploitational elements to draw a wide audience, the actual meat of the film is a man seeking redemption and honor.Find this movie. Watch it. Enjoy it. And see if it doesn't stick in your mind a heck of a lot longer than the average contemporary "Hollywood" movie.

COCKFIGHTER is one of those films that is so surprisingly good that you wonder why anyone wouldn't want to see it. This is the definitive movie on rooster fights, and it features a great performance by Warren Oates. This is a superior flick; it is strange, but beautiful.