Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia

Saw Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia, a blood-n-booze-fueled 70s western which starts off with a godfather-style man torturing his daughter (in some off-screen way) to reveal the name of the father of her child.  When she finally cries out "Alfredo Garcia" he offers his various goons one million dollars for the head of Alfredo Garcia.  Two of these goons travel around Mexico showing a picture of Alfredo to various people and asking after him and finally they run into a small bar pianist who knows him.  This small time pianist is the real main character of the film and the place where the film starts building character and so forth.

The film drops one big hint early on - the picture of Alfredo very closely resembles the pianist to the point that I thought he was Alfredo.  According to imdb trivia, the actor who played the pianist is actually in the picture, just with prosthetics.  As the pianist decides to chase after Alfredo, it is not just Alfredo's life he's going to deliver to the goons, but his own.  This theme is reinforced by his corvette car being increasingly beat up as the film goes on and progressively more coated with dust and also by his white suit becoming smattered with blood and dirt.

This is a fairly grim film.  The pianist constantly swills alcohol and speaks to Alfredo as if he were in the car - hating him for putting him through this but also reminiscing on their friendship and liking him.  As we can tell from the business with the picture, Alfredo is just another version of him.  This is not personal, it's just business.  He is a man who is confronting the cruelties of a capricious world (or in this case, the godfather-type guy from the beginning.)  He wants this one million dollars because it means a new life, but is he willing to sacrifice his entire current life for that chance?

The film is fairly grim and although I liked the themes and subtexts of the film, I didn't really like it.  It ends on a close-up of an endlessly firing machinegun muzzle.  This intense focusing on (glorification of?) violence is off-putting and after two hours, frankly enough.  It's not a bad film by any means, just very ugly and grim and in love with its ugly grimness.  A good blood-n-guts film, but as usual, I'm a bit too nelly to really dig it.