Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia

REVIEW
Oates is a piano player who becomes a bounty hunter when the title command is proclaimed by a rich Mexican landowner. Oates sets off across the dirty, dusty modern landscape to find and deliver that head, which belongs to the father of the landowner's daughter's child. Oates is helped by Vega, his sometimes lover who knows Garcia's last whereabouts. They plan to deliver the head, accept the bounty and make a better life for themselves together. As is not uncommon in Peckinpah's films, this happy, nonviolent outcome is unlikely. Every character is sweaty, miserable and unattractive, double-crossing and betraying each other constantly. An uncharacteristic film for Peckinpah -- it harkens back to his earlier Ride the High Country -- Alfredo Garcia is somber and rather downbeat, but it will please those who are willing to take a brief interest in the struggling lives of its unhappy characters.