Customer Reviews

Invitation to a Gunfighter [VHS]

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This movie made me a Yul Brynner fan. I'd watched him many times in other movies, but I'd never seen a movie just because Yul Brynner was in it. Now I feel it is time to review this fine gentleman's career. I've been a movie fan for over forty years and appreciate a good Western, yet somehow this film had escaped me. Its release date (1964) places it in a volatile period within and beyond the movie industry. For Westerns, John Wayne rules, but A Fistfull of Dollars is just around the corner. Invitation is therefore free of the Italian influence, but Yul takes the no-name, silent gunman to the extreme in the first part of the film. He is mystic, mesmerizing, mysterious, and muy macho in this role! As his character slowly reveals himself, he loses his invulnerability and where it leads, no other Hollywood leading man could have pulled this off. Bravo, Yul!
And brave,too. 1964 was a year of many troubled civil rights freedom marches and sit-ins. How this film played at the time and how many fans might react would certainly make this a risky venture. The story involves interracial love, bigotry, and even a one-man riot and looting scene. All in all, Yul Brynner carries this movie. Masterfully using just a look rather than unnecessary dialog, he brings depth and rich characterization to his role. And with that, powerful empathy to an overall theme of justice, respect, and equality.
On a minor note, in an area often inaccurate in Westerns, this movie matches the guns to the era. The setting is 1865, and the pistols and rifles look authentic for the time. I also was curious about what might be in those two little bags of luggage Brynner carries with him as apparently his only possessions. They remain with him to the end and effectively add to his mysterious persona.

Yul Brynner is a powerful and dynamic actor. He had donned the cowboy hat before in the 'Magnificent Seven' but quite arguably Jules was his greatest role ever.

In the film Brynner plays a mysterious gun fighter hired to kill a rebel who's property was sold in the war. The man demands answers but is shot. Forced to leave he refuses and returns to his farm where a gun is drawn upon him and he has to defend himself. In killing the man he has a bounty placed upon his head and a gunman is hired. But this movie is more than just a simple Western. It is much, much, much more.

In the town the Mexicans are treated as inferiors. The rebel is the only man that treats them decently. And they beg Jules not to kill him. Jules refuses yet Jules has a dark secret of his own that is similar to the Mexicans. Jules is a Creole from Louisana and is half French and African. His father was a slave owner and his mother was a slave. Because of this he was treated as inferior. When his mother argued with his father she was sold away because she was property. So naturally Yules is a cold and very dark because of the hardship and injustices of his past. And in Brynner, the Mexicans, and the Rebel there are three groups that are being discriminated against. The town claims to be against slavery but yet it stands by every injustice outside of it. And we see the conflict that surmonts between Jules, the Rebel, and the Town. So the film shapes into a morality play of sorts like 'High Noon' where the protagonist must choose between right and wrong. Brynner's role is very much like Eastwood's 'Man with No Name'. He is sort of an anti-hero or perhaps a divided one who has to make deep, difficult desicions. Does he do his job or does he do what is right? The film has romance, intensity, and passion and it all plays out well. The film is really a fine example of how great the past generation was in filmmaking. This film makes the viewer think, feel, and rationalize. The characters are very human and that is what I appreciate. Brynner's role is very realistic and intersting as he is more than just a hired cowpoke: he is a deep, complex, and intense. This film is truly a work of art and should be a part of any Western fans collection.

As Leonard Maltin has already observed, this is pretty talky for a western, but if you love Yul Brynner, you'll like this.

It's a typical Brynner role in which he plays the outsider who comes in to handle a problem that no one else can or will.

It's also a typical western in that the rich haves are busy further disenfranchising the have-nots, and the bourgeois are either too comfortable or faint-of-heart to do anything about it other than hire a tough guy.

As usual, Brynner not only epitomizes tough-guyness, but he also manages to display his intellect and grasp of culture. This set him apart from most tough guys of the era.

Brynner's character is tormented and driven by his secret past. Yul was always able to make this kind of thing work on the screen, because he was enigmatic and exotic in real life, having been born in Vladivostok of Swiss, Mongolian, Russian, and Greek stock. Read the biography written by his son Yul Brynner Jr. for more on this.

The outcome of the conflict is tragic and not what any of the principals think it will be, except perhaps Brynner's character.

I personally find it hard to watch anyone else when Brynner is on screen, but the rest of the cast acquit themselves admirably.

This skilfully crafted screenplay gives the viewer far more than gunplay, it is a biting social comentary as relavent today as it was when it was made. Brynner is at his best turning the hypocrissy, cowardice and dirty secrets of the small New Mexico town that hired him to kill it's only "reb" to it's destruction, and gives an uncomfortably open view of our society. Excellent dialogue and acting by George Seagal and Janice Rule, as well as the town "capons" lead by Pat Hingle.

If you liked Yul Brynner in "The Magnificent Seven" you will love him in this movie. Brynner is cool as they come. This is a great western and should be on DVD.

A run-of-the-mill hired gun oater told from the hired gun's point of view. Yul Brynner stars in INVITATION TO A GUNFIGHTER, a western with a conscience from 1964, a bad time for westerns made in the lower 48. Brynner plays Jules Gaspard d'Estaing (Jewel, for short,) a silk-shirted top-notch gun for hire who's enlisted by a small southwestern town to shoot George Segal, a young man returning from the Civil War who, much to town owner and chief psychopath Pat Hingle's horror and disgust, fought for the Confederacy. Segal returns to town bereft of farm, stolen--- er, claimed and sold by Hingle while he was gone - and sweetheart Janice Rule, a New England lass who married a one-armed piano player out of pity. After Segal tries to take back his farm, rather forcefully and impulsively, Hingle's hatred for all things southern boils over and he hires one of the best guns in the lawless west.

At some point in the movie Brynner's character observes that this cowed frontier town is filled with hens (Civil War widows) and capons (injured vets of that war.) It can be ruled by anyone with enough moxie to take it over, and hence we're given the reason why Hingle's character is named Brewster - well, it rhymes with rooster, anyway, and his penchant for quoting and paraphrasing passages from the Bible is Hollywood's shorthand way of telling us he's either a fraud or criminally demented. In any event, the slave system Segal may (underline and italicize the word `may') have been fighting to protect and defend is clumsily contrasted with the Hingle-led town's treatment of women and resident Mexicans. Neither can vote in town councils, the Mexicans can't buy ammunition to kill game to feed their families, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

Which reminds me, Brynner ain't half-bad as the suave and conflicted gun slinger. It probably goes without saying that there was only one man, recently returned from the war, who treated the resident Mexicans with any respect. That fact doesn't escape Brynner's attention, anyway, and it sets up the Big Conflict - does a hired gun let outside factors interfere with his contract to kill? INVITATION TO A GUNFIGHTER would have been a whole lot better if it hadn't tried so hard to prove the town's moral hypocrisy, if it hadn't spent so much time developing a sticky romantic quadrangle between Rule, Brynner, Segal, and the One-Armed Man, and especially if it hadn't loaded a simple story with so much `message.' Westerns, and action movies in general, work best when the connection between motivation and action is simple and direct. In ItaG that connection is hopelessly, and needlessly, tangled. Brynner has a lithe intensity that rises above the material and almost, but not quite, carries this movie along with him.

This is one of Yul Brynner's best portrayals on the cinematic screen. He plays Jules, a cold-blooded hired gun brought in to snuff out the town's last rebel. Brynner's portrayal of this bast@rd-with-a-heart is electric. He commands the screen even from the shadows. Watch for the hilarious scene where he's introduced to the town boss:

Brewster: Is your name Jewel?
d'Estaing: No.
d'Estaing: My name is [writes his name on a blackboard]
Brewster: Jewels...Gasperd...Die-es-ting
d'Estaing: Jules...soft j, silent s...Gaspard...silent d...d'Estaing...just a touch of dipthong.

This ambitious picture, what was once called a "psychological Western" is pretty tough-going by today's standards. It isn't especially cinematic in it's presentation and feels kind of flat. Talky and at time overwrought and even pretentious. There are some effective moments, Yul and Rule are both good in some of their scenes.

I may be a little bias when it comes to Yul Brynner but, this man can do it all. When it comes to talent Yul Brynner has it. Silent & Strong he comes into town, & sets it right. This is the bad guy you cant help but love.

Yul Brynner will always be remembered for his great parts. However, this particular movie he plays exceptionally well portraying the greed and pathetic apathy of how some people viewed the dollar bill. I believe this reveals Yul to how he saw greed in the world.