A Bullet for the General

In past reviews I've referred to A Bullet for the General (1967) as atrocious. Re-watching it, I'm not sure what caused this vituperative reaction. Damiano Damiani's Mexican Revolution epic is certainly flawed, but as Spaghetti Westerns go it's a fairly high-end product.

Mexican bandit El Chuncho (Gian Maria Volonte) ambushes a troop train. Among the passengers is Tate (Lou Castel), an enigmatic American who joins the bandits. Chuncho works for Revolutionary General Elias (Jaime Fernandez), raiding government arsenals and slaughtering soldiers. While Chuncho wants to settle in the town of San Miguel, Tate urges him to press on with his campaign. It turns out that Tate has an ulterior motive in helping Chuncho.

A Bullet for the General singlehandedly launched the Zapata Western. This subset of the Spaghetti phenomenon explored the Mexican Revolution of 1910-23, grafting leftist politics onto Villa and Zapata's Mexico. Some Zapatas referenced Italy's fascist past: Sergio Leone explicitly modeled a scene in Duck, You Sucker! on the 1944 Fosse Ardeatine massacre. Others paralleled contemporary events, from CIA meddling in Latin America to the Vietnam War. As a result, gringo gunslingers in Zapatas more closely resemble the cutthroat mercenaries of Vera Cruz than The Magnificent Seven.

Working with leftist scribe Franco Solinas (The Battle of Algiers), Damiani adds a Marxist wrinkle to the Western buddy dynamic. Tate represents America as greedy, callous and self-interested: "not much heart but lots of pesos," one character observes. Chuncho is an illiterate criminal but an idealist at heart, creating an ironic mismatch. Chuncho's dream is to defend a small village, yet abandons them to secure an arms shipment. Tate's interest is purely mercenary, yet he risks his life to save Chuncho. Their differing worldviews make them amusing partners, but sets up a downbeat ending.

A Bullet for the General succeeds in delivering violent action. Damiani provides a handsomely shot film, using familiar Almeria locations to good effect. Solinas recycles set pieces from Battle of Algiers: a woman planting bombs, the police station ambush. Damiani provides more original action: a train ambush with a gruesome finish; Chuncho's brother El Santo (Klaus Kinski) raining blessed grenades onto a Federale column; Tate massacring a company of soldiers with a machine-gun. Coupled with Luis Bacalov's excellent score it's a thrilling movie.

Unfortunately, Bullet's raison d'etre is its politics. Between shootouts, Damiani stops the action for heavy-handed lectures on the wonders of Communism. One painfully condescending scene has a revolutionary give bread to wide-eyed starving children, instructing them to "divide it equally." Gee, thanks. Scenes with Chuncho's gang shooting priests and gang-raping prostitutes may be attempts at moral ambiguity, but come off in bad taste. Such is the peril of genre film messages: to reach mass audiences, politics are distilled to their silliest form.

Gian Maria Volonte gives a typically outsized performance, making Chuncho a colorful proletarian hero. One imagines Volonte, a committed leftist, relishing this part more than similar roles in Leone's Dollars trilogy. Lou Castel provides fine counterpoint as the cold-blooded Tate. Martine Beswick (Thunderball) makes an appealing sidekick to Chuncho, while Klaus Kinski steals his scenes taking the "Holy Hand Grenade" concept seriously.

While problematic, A Bullet for the General is certainly better than I remembered. If it focused more on the action and less on its Little Red Book primer material I'd probably like it even more.