BRING ME THE HEAD OF ALFREDO GARCIA

Bring Me The Head Of Alfredo Garcia is a 1974 action film starring the late Warren Oates and directed by legendary film director the late Sam Peckinpah. Sam Peckinpah is actually one of my favorite film directors of all-time and would be considered to be the Quentin Tarantino of his day, at least in my view, with his ultra-violent films that were similar to Tarantino's movies (although, strangely enough, I've never heard Quentin list Peckinpah as of his favorite film directors even though--again, at least in my view--their films are so similar). Anyway, Peckinpah took the concept of cinematic violence to a whole new level in his films, including this one. Bring Me The Head Of Alfredo Garcia is about a ruthless powerful man--who is only known as "The Boss"--who orders a $1 million bounty on the "head" of the man who impregnated his daughter who tells her brutal father who he is after he strips her and has one of his henchmen break her arm to get her to tell him after she initially refuses. Warren's character along with his girlfriend decide to seek the "head" of Garcia when two of The Boss's henchmen walk into Warren's character's bar to see if he or anyone else in the bar knows the whereabouts of Alfredo. Along the way, Warren's character and his girlfriend encounter two rapist bikers--one of whom is played by country music legend/actor Kris Kristofferson (of Blade fame)--whom Warren's character winds up shooting & killing before they have a chance to rape his girlfriend. They finally come upon Alfredo's grave--who had already died in a drunk driving accident a few weeks prior of which Warren's character learns about when his girlfriend tells him that she cheated on him with Garcia--and, before they can retrieve his head, they get attacked by a couple of other thugs who are likewise seeking the million-dollar bounty on his head. Warren's character wakes up later in Garcia's grave only to find his girlfriend dead and Garcia's head gone. So he hunts down the thugs and winds up shooting & killing them both and takes the head. He eventually gets stopped by members of Garcia's family and, while he's trying to talk them down, the two henchmen who first approached him in the bar pull up and end up gunning down Alfredo's family members save for one old man. One of the family members, before he gets shot, manages to kill one of the henchmen while Warren's character shoots & kills the other and then takes Garcia's head directly to The Boss. However, when The Boss attempts to give him the $1 million bounty, he has a change of heart and instead pulls his gun on him and ends up shooting him at the urging of his daughter who's standing next to her brutish father while holding Alfredo's baby. After Warren's character guns down The Boss along with his guards, he tries to make a run for it in his car and--spoiler alert!--gets gunned down by the rest of The Boss's guards. The scene is reminiscent of the final shootout scene in Sam Peckinpah's late-sixties classic western The Wild Bunch, which is widely regarded as Sam Peckinpah's most famous--and most violent--movie (and also stars Warren Oates who had starred in a number of Peckinpah's films). Anyway, as you can probably tell, Bring Me The Head Of Alfredo Garcia is not your typical action film. Also, Warren Oates is not your typical action star, at least compared with the "hunky" action movie stars of today. The violence is also not as, shall we say, cartoonish as it tends to be in a lot of modern-day action films. However, for those who are interested in seeing an action flick that's--again, shall we say--different than modern-day action flicks, especially those that tend to focus more on the "action" than on the actual plot, then they might find Bring Me The Head Of Alfredo Garcia--there again, shall we say--interesting.