El Bandido Malpelo / Il lungo giorno della violenza (Giuseppe Maria Scotese, 1971)

[Mickey13]

Copied from the Spagvemberfest 2022 thread:

@Mickey13

Other than the fact that Fajardo turns in one of his better performances, this is basically a low-rent Zapata western with most of the same tropes you have seen in more accomplished works e.g. the idealist revolutionary type is contrasted with the apolitical, thieving peon who gets involved owing to purely pecuniary reasons, but gradually turns into a revolutionary himself; you could say that the motion picture features a juxtaposition between the informed, idealist form of violence as well as the apolitical, ignorant brute force represented by Malpelo.

Apart from some shaky, hand-held camerawork, the execution is fine for the most part, yet the film evidently lacks the polish and sophistication of the more celebrated works and fails to provide much in the way of novel ideas which could distinguish it from the outings it essays to emulate. In spite of having loftier ambitions, it is a cheap production through and through and its visibly inferior production values saliently vitiate the final results. I suppose it is preferable to see something like this, which was clearly made with the intent of outling broader social issues and invoking topics going beyond film’s modest boundaries, but the final outcome does not exactly live up to its exaltedly defined goals and too often appears excessively preachy for its own good, getting enmeshed in its arid political discussions about revolution.