Wow! What a bizarre film! Unfortunately the few funny moments there were were quite overshadowed by it's completely weird and random vibe throughout.

It's a movie as timely as it is provocative and amazingly, for much of its running time, it is weirdly funny.

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

Blistering performances.

Burt Lancaster plays Valdez an ageing Mexican-American lawman who after the wrongful death of a black man he is determined that vicious and bigoted land baron Frank Tanner pays $100 compensation for his Indian wife.Humiliated and beaten up by Tanner's men, he is tied up on a cross and send off to the desert before he is freed. Valdez a former cavalry officer is out for revenge and abducts Tanner's woman and starts to pick off his men one by one until Tanner is basically stripped of his protection.The film paints Valdez as a steely but dignified man who is never stripped off his humanity despite being strapped on a cross. Tanner on the other hand sees blacks, Mexicans, Indians to be beneath him and just above his cattle.Based on a novel by Elmore Leonard, shot on location in Spain it is just a standard revenge western which is elevated by Lancaster.

Today, Elmore Leonard is primarily known for his crime fiction. Throughout the 1960s and 70s, though, he spawned a number of Westerns, most notably "3:10 to Yuma", "Joe Kidd", "Valdez is Coming" and Martin Ritt's "Hombre", the best of the bunch.Directed by Edwin Sherin, and set in post-Civil War Arizona, "Valdez is Coming" stars Burt Lancaster as Bob Valdez, a Mexican-American constable. When Valdez is manipulated into killing a black, ex slave, he rightfully holds cattle baron Frank Tanner (Jon Cypher) responsible. Valdez orders Tanner to pay the deceased man's wife one hundred dollars compensation. Tanner refuses."Valdez is Coming's" middle section unfolds like a conventional revenge-western. Tanner repeatedly beats and humiliates Valdez, who subsequently fights back. The film then climaxes with a brilliant sequence in which Tanner and Valdez face-off in the desert. "Pay the hundred dollars," Valdez reiterates simply, the line encapsulating the absurdity of both the film's plot and the sheer stubbornness of Tanner, a man whose pettiness, selfishness and cruelty Valdez's lofty principles have exposed. The "last act gunfight" has long been a cliché in Westerns. In "Valdez is Coming", though, director Edwin Sherin abruptly ends his film before the requisite showdown begins. It's an effective move; Valdez's final monetary request is the showdown's first bullet, the look on Tanner's face makes it clear that Valdez's principles have hit their target, and Sherin's abrupt conclusion forces we the audience to contemplate the pettiness of frontier justice, vengeful gratification, pride and even human egos.Unsurprisingly for a western released in the 1970s, "Valdez is Coming" is preoccupied with abuses directed against minorities. Women, Apaches, blacks, Mexicans and "half-breeds" are all the victims of cruel, white, land-owners, and Tanner's refusal to pay is always linked to his covert bigotry; Mexicans, Natives and Blacks simply don't matter. Valdez wants to make them matter.Lancaster made a number of covertly political films in the 1960s and 70s. "Valdez is Coming" isn't as good as these. It's too conventional, aesthetically plain and Lancaster looks a bit ridiculous in brown face paint. Still, it opens and closes with a pair of powerful sequences and Lancaster imbues his character with an infectious mixture of grime and grace.What really elevates the film, though, is Elmore Leonard's prose. Spare, direct and pulpy, Leonard skewers the tropes upon which "Wild West" mythology once hinged. Instead of a celebration of white masculinity, individualism and The Law, Leonard posits a brown man as the hero. More than this, Valdez becomes an almost divine figure. Granted a Christ-like resurrection (in one of the film's more hokey scenes), he becomes nothing less than a leader of the downtrodden.7/10 – See "Hombre" and "The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean".

Fundamentally a revenge Western, not too badly done, but with considerable built-in illogic. The humble, wheezing old local sheriff, Lancaster, is tricked into shooting a man by the evil boss man Jon Cypher. The deferential Lancaster begs one hundred dollars from Cypher for the innocent dead man's window. Cypher and the gang laugh at him and shoot holes in the wall against which he's standing. Lancaster pursues the matter and Cypher's gang beat him and tie him to a crucifix and send him off stumbling through the forest to die. Well -- he doesn't die. How COULD he die? If he did -- or even if he were merely disabled for life -- the title of the movie wouldn't be "Valdez is Coming." It wouldn't even be "Valdez is Going." As it is, Lancaster recovers from his near-death experience with the help of humble Mexican farmer Frank Silvera and his taciturn family. Then, Cypher and his group had better look out because Valdez is definitely coming. He digs out his old uniform and weapons from the time he was a cavalry trooper, hits and runs, kidnaps Tanner's girl friend, Susan Clark, and finally get the one hundred dollars for the widow.Frank Silvera's part isn't a big one but he's great at playing Mexicans. He was the gunslinger who finally offed Paul Newman in "Apache." He's played African-Americans and Tahitians. He LOOKS ethnic. His father was a Spanish Jew and his mother was Jamaican. A marvelously reassuring performance.Susan Clark is fine. She has deep-set blue eyes and thin but sensuous lips, the upper one the same shape and size as the lower one. I wouldn't mind kidnapping her myself.Lancaster is Lancaster. He was fifty when this was shot and still running and hopping around doing some of his own action scenes. My God, he was fit. His Spanish accent isn't bad but he really ought to stay away from dialects.I don't know who is responsible for casting and make ups but the director should really have brought some of them up short. The head of Cypher's gang is played by Barton Heyman. His appearance is ludicrous and he's on screen often. First, his face is too dark for a Mexican or Mestizo, emphasizing his startling blue eyes. Next, he's balding and yet make up has given him the kind of long bushy hair combed back that was fashionable among rock stars in 1970, when this was shot. And they've topped it off with a set of mutton chop whiskers that turn him into a simulacrum of Frank Zappa or somebody. I don't like to carry on about what ought to be a minor problem like this but every time the guy appears, it's as if a gong had been rung and a big red sign flashed on the screen -- "1970".At the end -- lookout, a spoiler -- Cypher and his gang have trapped the unarmed Lancaster and his captive Clark. Clark has decided to abandon Cypher and leave with Lancaster. Cypher orders the gang to shoot Lancaster. One of the gang has developed respect for Lancaster and refuses. Bart Heyman grins through his ridiculous mustache and hollers, "She is not MY woman!" Cypher himself hasn't the guts to do it. Lancaster gets his one hundred dollars.It's not a bad movie. It's merely rather routine. But it is fun to see Lancaster unlimber his Sharps carbine and shoot half a dozen bad guys at a distance over a mile. Those bad guys were colleagues and friends of Heyman's gang -- you know, the gang that refused to kill Lancaster because they had no motive for doing so? Cue the deus ex machina.

Valdez is Coming is directed by Edward Sherin and adapted for the screen by Roland Kibbee and David Rayfiel from the novel of the same name written by Elmore Leonard. It stars Burt Lancaster, Susan Clark, Jon Cypher and Frank Silvera. Music is by Charles Gross and photography by Gábor Pogány. It's out of United Artists and shot in DeLuxe colour. Plot finds Lancaster as ageing town constable Bob Valdez, who after being forced into killing an innocent man, attempts to get compensation for the dead man's widow out of the townsfolk responsible for the events leading up to the shooting. This is met with a less than favourable response, particularly from crooked rancher Frank Tanner (Cypher), who although he is the most guilty party, takes umbrage to the suggestion and has Bob tied to a wooden cross and hounded out of town. But Bob will be back, he may be old and gentile in nature, but he's an experienced Indian fighter and a crack shot marksman. Watch out, Valdez is Coming.Solid if a little too ponderous at times, Valdez is Coming is sort of like an amalgamation of an American Oater and a Spaghetti Western. Filmed in southern Spain, at locations where master Italian director Sergio Leone shot many of his European Westerns, the film is the silver screen directing debut of Edward Sherin, who made his name as a director in American theatre and television. Whilst the direction is competent and the acting from Lancaster adds a complexity to the story, the picture almost seems to be trying too hard to make Leonard's source material work. The bigotry of men card is played very early on and from then on in everything is just too predictable, in fact were it not for Lancaster's screen presence the piece would fall well under average. The Christ-come-avenging angel motif is subtlety played by Lancaster, but tension is in short supply and action sequences few and far between. Somewhere in the cramped mix is a good film, one with something to say, a film desperately trying to make a dramatic thrust courtesy of a decent man on a mission narrative. Sadly it doesn't all come together, but thanks to Lancaster and a neat ending, it's not one to dismiss completely. 6/10Footnote: British cuts of the film offer a version missing some violent moments, suffice to say that if seeking the film out one should choose carefully.