One Paragraph Movie Review: Hombre

Two hundred and thirty-fourth film: Hombre, a Western with Paul Newman playing a white man who was brought up by the Apache who saves a group of white people (who weren’t brought up by the Apache) after they’re held up by bandits during a stagecoach journey. It is entirely unreasonable to expect anyone to objectively describe a movie with Paul Newman’s face in it, but from all evidence this was okay, and super-enlightened for 1967. Although it smacks of the whole Dances-With-Wolves thing, where we must have a white hero trained by native Americans rather than the infinitely simpler native American hero, the calm competence and stoicism displayed by Newman’s character is a clear comment on the racial superiority of just about everyone over dumb selfish white idiots and oh my GOD his steely blue eyes just pierce through your skeleton right to your marrow, don’t they? Tense, rewarding, tragic, and dusty, there’s good guys, bad guys, and a little bit of context-understandable sexism, plus some very good dialogue about women putting up with favours men want in the middle of the night. Yep, decent. Three argumentative shots of mescal out of five.