Solemplex To me, this movie is perfection.

AniInterview Sorry, this movie sucks

Nayan Gough A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

Fleur Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

kingsgo4th In Mexico 1866, ex-Confederate officer and southern gentleman Ben Trane meets Joe Erin, a ruthless outlaw whose winning smile could be the last you'll ever see. After a close brush with Federal troops and a near-fatal first encounter with Erin's gang, Trane manages to get them hired as mercenaries for the Emperor Maximilian. Rebel factions led by General Ramirez have amassed a force of peasants to be reckoned with. Expressing deep concern for the safety of Countess Duvarre, the amiable Marquis Labordere briefs Trane and Erin's men they will be escorting the lady in a regal coach to the port city of Vera Cruz. Her coach could be attacked by Rebels. Trane is suspicious that something else besides the safety of the alluring countess is at stake.The two stars playing poles-apart characters is exactly what starts the fireworks. The intriguing plot, the double-crossing, sleazy, elegant, back-stabbing, playing-the-angles crew, all working amidst a major rebellion keeps you on your toes. Beautifully filmed western with a great climax!

Gabriel Teixeira In a time when Westerns were dominated by John Wayne and his moralistic, conservative and boring characters, the Western genre was rarely not boring. I always thought it was thanks to the Italian ('Spaghetti') Westerns that this all changed, but it actually began earlier.'Vera Cruz' is a rare non-moralistic American western; instead of the goody two-shoes Wayne rip-offs, it is filled with morally ambiguous characters. Ben Trane (Gary Cooper), a former Confederate soldier, and Joe Erin (Burt Lancaster), an outlaw, are just two of many who go to Mexico to fight in their revolution; but rather than helping the rebels free their country, they strike a deal with Emperor Maximilian to escort a countess all the way to Vera Cruz. That is what made the Italian Westerns so good. The characters are fighting not for an idealistic protection of 'freedom' or whatever John Wayne would have used to justify it, but for pure gold and money. They fight for themselves, and themselves ONLY, no matter if their side is 'right' or 'wrong'. They are not above double-crossing others, even their 'friends', to help themselves.And believe me, there is a lot of double-crossing going around here.The casting is very good; Lancaster tends to be irritating with the way he keeps smiling and showing his teeth all the time, but acts well and Cooper is terrific as always. The supporting cast, with includes a equally terrific Cesar Romero and the then-unknowns Charles Bronson and Ernest Borgnine, is very good. The actors all actually look their part, another characteristic Italian westerns got from here.Unlike them, though, 'Vera Cruz' is not slow. It does not take its time to bask in the excellent scenery (which is as good as those of some Sergio Leone's films, for example), and moves toward the action every time its possible. For its time, it's surprisingly violent and realistically so; again, not like Wayne's westerns.An excellent western that influenced the Italian ones from the decade after, 'Vera Cruz' is exactly what American westerns should have been. It still needed a bit more polishing, something Sergio Leone and his contemporaries did masterfully, but it is still one of the best westerns I've ever seen.

Steffi_P Back in the 1930s, we had numerous trashy B-Westerns. Then in the 40s the format returned to the serious "A" bracket. By the 1950s the game had been raised even further, and we had sophisticated Oscar-winning Westerns such as High Noon and Shane. It was inevitable there would be some fall-out – some mishmash of high budgets and low values. Say hello to the over-the-top pyrotechnics and shoot-'em-up sensibilities of 1954's Vera Cruz.Let me stress that Vera Cruz is no throwaway cheapie. If half the budget was spent on explosives and sombrero-sporting extras, the other half was spent on securing A-list leading men. It is odd to see such able and prestigious performers as Gary Cooper and Burt Lancaster plodding their way through a leaden script that is one trite excuse for a shoot-out after another. And yet they are by no means miscast. Cooper, with his laconic and world-weary manner is the ideal man-with-a-troubled-past, and he brings a depth and intelligence to the character that is not there in the screenplay. Lancaster is simply fun to watch, with his manly swagger and predatory grin – a clever actor having fun with a lightweight role.This was an early assignment for director Robert Aldrich. Aldrich was always something of a technical show-off, and at this early stage he displays far more showy technique than careful thought. Vera Cruz is full of needless high angles, low angles and other "artsy" shots. While Aldrich would later make a real craft out of oddball shot composition, making the weirdness of the image complement the twisted worlds he portrayed, here it comes across as nothing more than the indulgence of a young director looking to make his mark.However, it is during the action sequences that Aldrich's direction really comes to life. He composes the gunfights out of lots of little bursts – dynamic shots each of which neatly complements and outdoes the one before it. He also proving himself to be a master of giving an impression of violence, sidestepping the strict rules on graphicness that were in place at the time. For example, it would have been unthinkable in 1954 to show a man being shot in the face, and in fact you were not even allowed to show a gun being fired and a person being hit in the same shot. But when we cut from the countess shooting to a rebel falling back clutching at his face, we get all the savagery of the moment without a single glimpse of gore. It is Aldrich's inventive staging of the action, as well as the spot-on editing of Alan Crosland Jr. that makes little flashes of perfection out of the tense revolutionary ambush, a peasant prisoner being hunted like an animal and of course the beautifully extravagant finale.To aficionados of European exploitation cinema (which, incidentally, is where my interest in this glorious medium began), a lot of the trappings in Vera Cruz will doubtless be familiar. The dubious morality of the heroes, the gritty Mexican setting, the completely implausible feats of marksmanship, not to mention the ridiculously high body count – it is all a bit reminiscent of that iconic Italian sub-genre of the 1960s known as the Spaghetti Western. And this is no coincidence – for the films of Sergio Leone, Sergio Corbucci et al were not anti-Westerns, they were more like hyper-Westerns, turning every cliché up to the max and stripping out all the twee niceties of the friendly cowboy flick. The Hollywood ancestors of Spaghetti Westerns are not the thought-provokers like High Noon, Shane or The Searchers, as is sometimes believed. No, their true predecessors are the frenzied no-brainers like Vera Cruz.

dougdoepke As I recall, the theatre was packed even down to the front row with a lot of noisy guys. Word around high school was that this was a really cool Western. Of course, it wasn't the kind of Western we were used to in 1954. Instead of the usual cowboy types, there were Cooper and Lancaster who may have worn cowboy hats, but were riding around with a lot of stiff-looking soldiers in dressed-up uniforms and a lot of little brown guys in white pajamas. But who cared when there was all that great action with thousands of guys shooting it out in big screen Technicolor. Then too, there was all that great scenery that didn't look like the usual cowboy towns and open spaces we were used to. Sure there had to be a story, something about gold coins, a funny looking stagecoach, and who gets to keep the coins everyone's fighting over. Seemed like the dressed-up soldiers wanted to keep their guy king and probably get their fancy uniforms pressed, while the guys in rags wanted their own guy king and probably get some better clothes. As I recall, I was rooting for Lancaster since he did all the great jumping around and had table manners a lot like mine. But everybody knew that Cooper always stood for everything that's right, so he would be on the winning side whichever side that was. But it was weird seeing this Negro with the white guys just like he was one of them. You just didn't see Negroes in Westerns, except maybe as servants in a big house. Actually, I was kind of glad when the little guys won because they looked like they really needed the money. Too bad about Lancaster, but you know that anyone who grins all the time can't be trusted. Still, seeing all those dead guys with the women crying over them did make me think all the shooting might not be so fun after all. I didn't know it then, but I guess a lot of big time movie guys as far away as Italy really liked the movie too. It gave them ideas, so they made their own versions that also made a lot of money. I guess that's the way the business works. Anyhow, that was 50-some years ago. Naturally, I don't think quite the same way today. But I think I can still say it anyway—Great action movie then, great action flick now.