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Nabaza.net-The MarketPlace - Hombre
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List Price: $6.98
Our Price: $2.99
Your Save: $ 3.99 ( 57% )
Availability: N/A
Manufacturer: 20th Century Fox
Starring: Paul Newman, Fredric March, Richard Boone, Diane Cilento, Cameron Mitchell
Directed By: Martin Ritt
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Audience Rating: Unrated
Binding: VHS Tape
EAN: 9786300246850
Format: Color
ISBN: 630024685X
Label: 20th Century Fox
Manufacturer: 20th Century Fox
Number Of Items: 1
Publisher: 20th Century Fox
Release Date: 1998-01-01
Running Time: 111
Studio: 20th Century Fox
Theatrical Release Date: 1967-03-21
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Editorial Reviews:
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Paul Newman is the blue-eyed "savage," a white man raised by the Indians who rejects so-called civilized society for his spiritual family, in Elmore Leonard's take on Stagecoach. It's not exactly Grand Hotel on wheels. The hypocrites, crooks, and racists Newman travels with cast him out of their polite company in the coach, then turn to him for salvation when outlaws hold up the stage and hunt them through the desert. It's hard to "like" Newman's cold, hard survivor, but you can't help but respect his cunning and his unsentimental directness. Fredric March is sweaty with corruption as a crooked Indian agent, and Richard Boone smiles his deadly charm as a lusty bad man. While this 1966 Western wears its social politics on its dusty sleeves, director Martin Ritt tempers the revisionist moral of the tale with a stripped-down ruthlessness befitting the rugged, unforgiving landscape. --Sean Axmaker
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating: 
Summary: Hombre
Comment: Based on an Elmore Leonard novel by the same name. the story is somewhat typical for Elmore Leonard which means it's somewhat eccentric for anyone else. Paul Newman is Hombre & he's a half-breed (no offense meant) who has been living as an Indian. He's approached by a white acquaintance who tells him that his white father has died & that he should look into his inheritance. Hombre cuts off his long hair & dons the white man's clothes but not the white man's ways. He ends up on a stagecoach with other passengers who don't appreciate who or what he is. To them he's a cold-blooded individual seeking only his survival. Of course he gives in but not completely; it will be his way which is the Indian way. The ending is a good one.
Paul Newman is excellent in his title role. This is his most dramatic western & perhaps his best, not counting Butch Cassidy... which wasn't a "straight" western. Richard Boone co-stars as the sadistic heavy & is very good also. Frederic March, in a character role, is good. The film is directed by the underrated Martin Ritt who directed Newman in five previous movies; in fact, this one made four movies in a row for the pair. Hombre might be the best of the bunch.
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Summary: hombre
Comment: very good movie and quality of product very good.paul newman great actor and richard boone very good bad man.
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Summary: A Man by any other name...
Comment: Hombre (1967)
Hombre (1967) staring Paul Newman as John Russell is one of my favorite westerns. It is based on the book by the same name written by Leonard Elmore.
In it Russell a blue-eyed white raised in part by a white man, then by the Indians, inherits a house in town.
He boards a stagecoach and tries to sit with the Whites inside, but the Whites don't want to have anything to do with him. He is asked to ride up top (kind of like sitting in the back of the bus). Later on the stagecoach is robbed by several white men and a Mexican. Russell manages to shoot one of the White men and recover the gold stolen by the Indian Agent riding inside the stagecoach. The Whites are only too glad to walk with Russell now, but wouldn't ride with him before.
*************SPOILER ALERT******************************
In The end Russell kills the banditos trailing the party and the Mexican asks with his dying breath, "What was his name"? He'd been calling him Hombre up to that point which is Spanish for Man. The Mexican thought of Russell as a Man even if the Whites did not.
Gunner May,2007
Customer Rating:
Summary: A very good movie. It is also a great example of the inverted Western.
Comment: In the mid to late sixties the Western was running out of steam and one of the popular fashions of the time was to invert the traditional storyline of the Indians being the bad guys and the Settlers (read Whites) being the good guys. Now, in reality, most of the better Westerns weren't that crude or binary, but it was the accepted shorthand for the genre. This movie is a pretty darn good example of the inverted type. However, given Paul Newman's especially blue eyes it is hard to accept him as the Indian. So, what they did was make him a White man raised among the Indians and who views himself and is viewed by others as if he were an actual Indian.
This is a story of racism, greed, lust, betrayal, vengeance, rivalry, violence, and cruelty. You know, all the cheerful and happy stuff of life. And the bad guys in this movie are terrific. Fredric March is supposedly a pillar of society and is shown to be more of a moral swamp. Richard Boone is honest in his villainy and brightens the movie in his confrontations. He really expects to have little trouble in getting what he is after and is frustrated by this strange hombre (he doesn't know Newman's character's name, John Russell, for most of the movie).
The movie isn't happy with one or two bad guys. It takes every character and strips them bare until the core of who they really are shows through. At least, what the fashionable fiction writing of the 1960s believed was at the core of each of us shines through.
The final confrontation is pretty grim, but heroic in its way. There is lots of good dialogue, but even better acting. Much of the film is done with facial expressions and we have to pay attention with our eyes to understand what is really going on with each of the characters.
I recommend this movie. It is very worthwhile to watch, if a bit grim. And it is a nice piece to remind us of the social politics of the 1960s. And, what the heck, it shows Paul Newman in his prime. Plus, it has Richard Boone and a bunch of other fine performances!
Customer Rating:
Summary: Paul Newman's Ode to Self-Reliance
Comment: Some reviewers on this site have said that all the white people in this film are louts; that's not true. Unlike Dances With Wolves, where every white man other than Kevin Costner's character is a brute, a lunatic or a savage, in Hombre the characters have a great variety of virtues and faults -- admittedly, mostly faults, but they are not caricatures, and I don't see this movie as a liberal guilt trip by whites.
For example, Peter Peter Lazer as the ticket agent stands up to Cicero Grimes and enforces the rules of the stage company; that's an example of a white character in the movie showing integrity. Diane Cilento's character is frank and gritty and self-confident. She stands up to Grimes in the stagecoach, calling him on his lewd comments. It's her integrity at the end of the movie, her willingness to put her own life on the line for others, that makes Newman's character finally relent from his self-contained aloofness and face the outlaws.
Newman is generally described in these reviews as selfish and egotistical; I disagree. The scene in the bar where he clobbers a tough guy in a bar who's abusing Indians with the butt of his rifle, showed lots of courage and it was done for others who were not in a position to help themselves. (Western justice wouldn't help the Indians; they knew it, and Skip Ward and David Canary's characters knew they could get away with it.) I thought it showed a lot of guts on Russell's part. As a half-white he stood a better chance at justice; but then, he didn't rely on others to provide him with justice. That's one of my favorite scenes in the movie.
The scene in the ticket office when Richard Boone's character Cicero Grimes enters, sets the background for a number of important aspects of the characters of the people in the cast. Grimes starts off trying to bully Newman's character John Russell into giving up his ticket. Grimes licking his lips, the way a cat does when it's really ticked off and ready to explode, with the word "friend" on his lips, is incredibly intimidating. He even blows away a returning soldier, who can't stand up to him, played to a "T" by Larry Ward. Newman's character, on the other hand, seems to be enjoying it and isn't fazed by Grimes' intimidation. I wish that scene had played out a little longer -- I'd like to have seen how Russell would have eventually dealt with Grimes; but that dynamic was held off till the last scenes of the movie.
Newman was aloof in the ticket scene. He didn't reach out to help anybody else, and this sets the scene for who he is: A self-sufficient man, who assumes that everybody else can fend for themselves, too. That's why he doesn't jump all over himself to help others -- he assumes they're grownups and can take care of themselves.
Besides coming to the aid of the Indians in the bar, another scene where Newman's character reaches out to help people is when the stage is held up. On the one hand he says to the bandits that he's not a witness to anything. But as soon as he sees his chance, he grabs his rifle and starts shooting. That's another aspect to the character of John Russell -- he's ruthless with criminals. If they threaten his life -- he threatens or takes theirs. This trait was also shown when he banished Dr. Favor to the desert with no water -- after Favor attempted to leave everyone else without water. Even Dr. Favor said it was tough, but just. This trait of John Russell was also shown when Cicero Grimes came up the hill to have a palaver with the people he was holding hostage at gunpoint in the shack. Grimes in essence came up the hill under a flag of truce. None was waved, but that was the dynamic, and he assumed that the "rule" of the situation was that since he was coming to talk, nobody would harm him. But Newman's character wasn't buying into this hypocrisy. Cicero Grimes was threatening the lives of all of the people in that shack. His conversion to gentlemanly ways when it suited him was something John Russell didn't buy into. Newman's character saw his chance, and shot and seriously wounded Grimes. Boone's character Grimes understood, shown when he paid the grudging but sincere compliment "you've got a lot of hard bark on you." (Newman's character wasn't swayed by the compliment. He didn't care what other people thought of him, good or bad. He was independent outwardly and inwardly.).
Paul Newman has generally gravitated towards playing scoundrels in a lot of his movies, people with great flaws. But this role is my favorite of Newman's, of all of his movies. The message of his character that I take from the film is: be independent, be self-sufficient. People in general are namby-pamby, and his blunt self-sufficiency chases that out of the people around him; they rise to the occasion and become grownups. In this sense it is a true American movie, i.e. depicting something of the American character; or at least our mythic impression of ourselves. America over-does independence and individualism, and Hombre is a terrific example of it.
When Barbara Rush's character is staked out in the sun, her husband won't attempt to save her, and comes across as a selfish you-know-what. John Russell won't save her because he knows, as he says to the two women in the shack, that even if they give up the money, the bandits will still kill them all. He knows there is no way of saving the woman tied up in the sun, and he has decided to not attempt it. Not until, that is, Diane Cilento's character outdoes him in integrity. She offers, at significant risk to her own life, to take the money down the hill to the bandits, even though she knows how ruthless the bandits are. She wants to try to save Mrs. Favor. Newman's character can't let that happen. I don't think it's just because it's a woman showing him up. That's part of it, but I think that a careful read of his character shows that he pays his own way through life, and he abounds in integrity. John Russell can't let somebody else bail him out, and have a higher level of integrity than his own -- so he relents and walks down the hill. He does so only after protecting the financial interests of the Indians from whom the Favors stole the money -- again showing his willingness to reach out to help people. Granted, two of the instances in the movie where he extends aid to others, are helping Indians. But he did get the whites through the desert. They followed him because, as he said, "I can cut it, lady." And he did, and they survived because of him. I think these examples refute the characterizations of some reviewers that Newman's character is selfish and egotistical. Individualistic to a fault, sure; but not egotistical, and not selfish.
This is one of my top ten favorite movies, along with Gandhi, Patton, A Thousand Clowns, The Third Man, The Fallen Idol, A Man For All Seasons, and a few others (mostly good character studies of men). I've watched Hombre dozens of times, and have just bought the DVD and am waiting for it to arrive. I live a few hundred miles from where Hombre was filmed, and I've contacted the Tucson Film board to ask exactly where the Old Helvetia Mine is located, where the last scenes in the movie were filmed. I'd like to visit there. This is a great drama, and a very satisfying movie.
Brent Poirier, Las Cruces NM USA
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