Valdez Is Coming

Studio: Kino Lorber Studio Classics

Dec 18, 2017 Web Exclusive By Stephen Danay

In the age of shared universe media, it’s a shame that we’ll never get one built around the works of Elmore Leonard. A screenwriter and novelist operating mainly in the western and crime genres, Leonard’s work served as the inspiration for many classic films including Jackie Brown, Out of Sight, 3:10 to Yuma, Get Shorty and Mr. Majestyk, as well as the F/X television series, Justified. Notable for his eye for character detail, laid-back coolness and dry sense of humor, Leonard’s influence on genre writing and filmmaking over the last five decades is enormous. Valdez is Coming, an American Spaghetti Western from 1971, is one of the lesser films derived from his work, but still bears some of his authorial stamps.

The film stars Burt Lancaster as Bob Valdez, an aging Mexican-American lawman who is forced to execute an innocent man by a cruel rancher. When the rancher refuses to provide $100 to the dead man’s pregnant widow and leaves Valdez for dead, it ignites a bloody vendetta. Simplistic even by the standards of the genre, Valdez is Coming provides a few oddball points of interest for Western fans. The most notable is seeing Lancaster, the smoldering A-list star of the forties and fifties, as an over-the-hill, half-Mexican sheriff. The brown-face that Lancaster dons to play Valdez - also worn by Barton Heyman as one of the villains - undercuts a lot of the sympathies that the film bears toward the oppressed non-white denizens of the Old West. This is best exemplified in the opening scene, which finds Valdez in a standoff with an African-American fugitive falsely accused of murdering an Army officer. The film makes it clear that the men share the same struggles, but have been forced into each others gunsights by powers beyond their control.

Stoic and determined as any good Western hero should be, Lancaster acquits himself well as Valdez - brown face aside - and fits comfortably in the canon of low-key, self-assured badasses that populate Leonard’s work. Even at ninety minutes, the film feels a bit thin and doesn’t have much to recommend it in the way of action, with the exception of a few shockingly brutal horse stunts that probably wouldn’t fly today. The film boasts a few brief flashes of the over-the-top ridiculousness that defined late sixties/early seventies Westerns - Valdez being forced to walk through the wilderness while tied to a crucifix feels not too far removed in obvious symbolism from Franco Nero moseying into town dragging a coffin in Django - but overall feels more serious and staid than many of its contemporaries. Strangest of all is the ending, which is bold in its attempts at a purposeful anti-climax, but will likely leave any viewers who went in expecting a straightforward showdown feeling robbed.

Kino Lorber’s new edition of Valdez is Coming features a commentary track by filmmaker and Western aficionado Jim Hemphill - which is less focused on the movie itself than on the biographies of the people involved - as well as a selection of trailers for other early seventies Westerns.

www.kinolorber.com/product/view/id/4908

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