Customer Reviews

Caboblanco / U.S. Marshal ( Caboblanco / Pursuit ) [ NON-USA FORMAT, PAL, Reg.2 Import - United Kingdom ]

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OK, I REALLY like Charles Bronson - that said, this is a REALLY good movie - I saw this on TV many years ago and never forgot it - took me many years to find it on DVD - some people get hung up on scenery, acting talent (or lack of it!), or comparisons to other movies - I totally go for the STORY - this particular one has a surprise ending that blew me away - I love it when the good guys prevail - there are so many excellent Bronson movies, I suppose this one has been forgotten about - I've seen many lists that don't include it - this has nowhere near the violence of the Death Wish series, etc., but you will be rooting for him immediately, just like always!

There are so many bad reasons to see films that seeing CaboBlanco simply because it has one of Jerry Goldsmith's most obscure scores doesn't seem quite such a stupid one, especially since the score is pretty good. Although it never matches its magnificent Ravelesque opening, let alone the extraordinary work Goldsmith was doing at the same period (Star Trek, The Boys From Brazil, The First Great Train Robbery, Magic, The Swarm, Masada, Poltergeist), it's another case of a composer being inspired by a bad film to turn out a good score that's still head and shoulders over 99% of film scoring today.

The film itself is certainly an oddity, an attempt to do a Casablanca in post-war Peru, but Charles Bronson, Dominique Sanda, Simon MacCorkindale, Fernando Rey and Jason Robards were never likely to offer much competition to Bogie, Bergman, Heinreid, Rains and Veidt even had the script been better. (There's no Dooley Wilson or As Time Goes By, but Nat King Cole is playing on the jukebox singing The Very Thought of You.) Sanda in particular, as usual in her English language work, is so staggeringly awful you half-expect her to bump into the furniture, although she gets strong competition from MacCorkindale in the who-can-give-the-worse-performance stakes, but an easygoing Bronson at least is good value.

Feeling more like one of RKO's mid 50s SuperScope South of the Border treasure hunt movies than anything from Warner Bros.' golden age, the film at times feels like its suffered some last-minute editing, jumping into some scenes apparently midway while some characters are never introduced properly (prominently billed Clifton James never appears at all), and the ending - involving a parrot, a secret code, a stuck record on a jukebox and a cyanide pill - is one of the most absurd endings in screen history. Still, there's some fluid and impressively composed camerawork and the scenery's nice, although both suffer in the DVD transfer here. It's an unlikely candidate for restoration, but it's worth noting that the German DVD available through Amazon.de does at least boast a good 2.35:1 transfer and extras (trailer, 25-minute making of and hardback book style packaging), though the soundtrack doesn't fare so well.