Hombre

1967

Action / Drama / Western

17
Rotten Tomatoes Critics - Certified Fresh 94% · 16 reviews
Rotten Tomatoes Audience - Upright 80% · 2.5K ratings
IMDb Rating 7.4/10 10 13741 13.7K

Please enable your VPN when downloading torrents

If you torrent without a VPN, your ISP can see that you're torrenting and may throttle your connection and get fined by legal action!

Get Hide VPN

Plot summary

John Russell, disdained by his "respectable" fellow stagecoach passengers because he was raised by Indians, becomes their only hope for survival when they are set upon by outlaws.


Uploaded by: OTTO
June 09, 2022 at 02:36 AM

Director

Top cast

Paul Newman as John Russell
Diane Cilento as Jessie
Barbara Rush as Audra Favor
Frank Silvera as Mexican Bandit
720p.BLU 1080p.BLU
814.75 MB
1280*720
English 2.0
NR
23.976 fps
1 hr 51 min
Seeds 5
1.84 GB
1916*814
English 2.0
NR
23.976 fps
1 hr 50 min
Seeds 6

Movie Reviews

Reviewed by slokes 7 / 10

Antihero Actioner Rings True

Paul Newman sure could cut it in 1967. Not only did he give the performance of the year as Cool Hand Luke, but embodied the role of action antihero in this gritty, downbeat western as the laconic part-Apache John Russell, reluctant helper of assorted, sordid white people.

Russell has been living off the land with his Apache brethren when he is left a boarding house in a will. Russell sells the boarding house, which leaves its beautiful-but-weathered caretaker Jessie (Diane Cilento) on a long stage ride with Russell and a number of others with varied reasons for wanting to leave town. Unfortunately for everyone, one of them is a particularly ornery character named Cicero Grimes (Richard Boone).

"Hombre" is a coming-out party of sorts for writer Elmore Leonard; he had works adapted for screen before, most notably "3:10 To Yuma," but "Hombre" brings out the quotability and toughness we associate with Leonard today. Credit Newman and director Martin Ritt, as well as cinematographer James Wong Howe, for giving the film the space and terse energy it needs to deliver the action without underselling the human drama. Russell doesn't want to stick his neck out for people, and you don't blame him, yet you understand why he helps them in the end.

Screenwriters Harriet Frank and Irving Ravetch provide many memorable lines. A favorite, when a thief is being robbed at gunpoint: "It looks like you did good and we did better." But there's a tendency to overexposition, of people giving their life story at a drop of a hat. Everyone except Russell, who keeps it very cool throughout. Maybe it helps Newman look better.

"Takes a lot to light a fire under you, don't it?" Jessie asks him.

The story doesn't exactly hold together well upon reflection, and there are a number of what Hitchcock called "icebox scenes." One character walks around for days after being gutshot. Another is developed at length without having anything to do with the story except dying in it. But with "icebox scenes" you don't notice the incongruities until later. You are caught up with the energy and vitality, especially when things begin to happen in the second hour.

Newman is working Eastwood/McQueen territory here, and working it quite well. An important conflict in the film pits him against Dr. Favor (Fredric March), a self-righteous Indian agent who looks down on Russell for his American Indian roots despite the fact Favor has done well off the Apaches. When Favor's jaded wife (Barbara Rush) scoffs at the Apaches for eating dogs, Russell tells her if she was as hungry as they were, "you'd eat it. You'd fight for the bones, too." Newman doesn't raise his voice, doesn't even lean forward, but his burning blues make his anger palpable.

Rush's character is especially interesting, a reflection perhaps on the classic Leonard opportunistic female, or maybe even worse. I'm still not sure what she was playing at, but I enjoyed her character enormously. With Cilento, March, and especially Boone as well, you have performances that would provide engaging centers for other films, yet Newman towers over them without resorting to histrionics or even much in the way of humor (his wisecracks are few, however well-placed.)

"Hombre" is a near-classic Western that doesn't play by classic rules. But it makes its points well, keeps you involved, and allows you to relish one of Paul Newman's most indelible roles.

Reviewed by lee_eisenberg 7 / 10

Paul's and Martin's final collaboration

Martin Ritt first directed Paul Newman in "The Long, Hot Summer" in 1958. They continued working together over the next decade, notably on 1963's "Hud". Their final collaboration was 1967's revisionist western "Hombre". Newman plays a white man raised by the Apaches and forced into unenviable circumstances.

Unlike Arthur Penn's "Little Big Man", which was straightforward about its position with regards to a white man raised by the indigenous people,* "Hombre" presents the whole situation as a moral dilemma faced by the protagonist. All of it with some of the cleverest dialogue that I've ever heard in a movie. Newman has outstanding support from Fredric March, Richard Boone, Barbara Rush and Martin Balsam, and there's some great shots of the Arizona desert. I recommend it.

*Mind you, I do recommend "Little Big Man".

Reviewed by bkoganbing 9 / 10

"Cause I Can Cut It."

Paul Newman did a whole bunch of films with Director Martin Ritt and Hombre, one lean and mean western ranks as one of the best.

Newman is John Russell, the ultimate in the Stockholm Syndrome in the western film. He's a man who was kidnapped by the Apaches as a child, raised among them, and then when he was rescued from the Apaches, turned his back on his rescuers and went back to live among them. The opening of the film has some closeup shots of Newman as an Apache and he does look like a figure of interest with those baby blue eyes of his. The viewer is already involved, this is a person of interest, there's a story here, let's find out about him.

Circumstance has put him on a coach with several other passengers, including the Indian agent at the San Carlos Reservation, Fredric March and his wife Barbara Rush. Unbeknownst to everyone else, March has embezzled a whole stash of money from the tribe and is on the run, like Berton Churchill in Stagecoach. Of course Churchill is not taking his young pretty wife along with him.

The outlaws led by Richard Boone know about the loot and they ambush the coach, but the holdup is unsuccessful. Nevertheless the passengers are left afoot with the loot, but limited water on the Arizona desert.

It falls to Newman to lead them to safety, a guy they had previously snubbed. Hombre gets deliciously ironic that way.

Next to Newman, I'd say the best performance in the film is easily that of Diane Cilento, the very wise and earthy boarding house keeper. She's one experienced with life woman who if everyone heeded it would have been better all around.

Why are they with Newman, cause he can cut it. And as a film, Hombre definitely cuts it.

Read more IMDb reviews

2 Comments

Be the first to leave a comment