Villa Rides has a screenplay written Sam Peckinpah and Robert Towne but a very workmanlike direction from Buzz Kulik.

Yul Brynner with added hair stars as Pancho Villa the great Mexican revolutionary with fiery passion, cunning, pig headedness and some romance as well. Robert Mitchum is a soldier of fortune with a biplane, a pilot who supplies the Mexican army with weapons, but is gradually forced to join the rebellious side after he is caught up with Villa and a Mexican beauty. Mitchum is laconic and nonchalant but we do get to see him drop homemade bombs from the plane.

More impressive is Charles Bronson as Villa's right hand enforcer who clearly enjoys slaughtering people with style and some humour. Even shoots three people with one bullet in order to be economical.

Herbert Lom and Fernando Rey round up the Mexicans also bring political intrigue to the table.

The film was shot in Spain and it starts out as intriguing but it is uneven. The film varies in tone with some comedy but then you have some villagers getting slaughtered, others being executed and women being raped. There are some good action sequences but the film is too messy as its does not have a coherent narrative.

A Hollywood western exploring the life and times of Pancho Villa, with Yul Brynner extremely unusual casting for the part. It's not that Brynner simply doesn't look Hispanic, it's more than he struggles to make the guy come to life and feels more than a little bland. It's a shame about this central miscasting, as the supporting characters played by Robert Mitchum (an aviator) and Charles Bronson (an amoral right-hand man) are more interesting. Although this film has its moments, it's also way overlong and bogged down in romance and back-and-forth plotting which makes it feel slightly turgid at times.

So far I haven't seen one film about Pancho Villa that got it right and Villa Rides is definitely one of them. Perhaps the proposed biographical film that Johnny Depp will star in might do Villa some justice.

Yul Brynner and Robert Mitchum co-star in Villa Rides with Brynner in the title role. Mitchum plays your typical soldier of fortune although in his case he's a pilot of fortune. He's a pilot of one of those new fangled airplanes and it is through his eyes we see the story of the film unfold.

A damaged aircraft delays Mitchum in Mexico after making a delivery and before he knows it, he's hip deep in the revolution that is going on in Mexico. At this point in his career Villa is one of several guerrilla chiefs supporting the new republic and the presidency of the idealistic Francisco Madero played here by Alexander Knox. Madero himself was a strange and fascinating character, one day he might get a biographical film study of his tragic life.

The Mexican Revolution of the teen years saw the country give way to anarchy with Villa eventually becoming one of several generalissimos controlling a piece of Mexican turf. As Villa operated in the extreme north of the country it was his bad fortune to later on raid into the USA and get Woodrow Wilson to send our army after him.

Here at the beginning Villa though after Mitchum talks his way into not being shot by his forces, Brynner sees the value of Mitchum's airplane as a weapon of war. He puts one of his aides Charles Bronson to ride herd on Mitchum and the two of them don't get along at all.

According to Lee Server's book on Mitchum they didn't get along all that well during the filming. Another Mitchum, brother John Mitchum wrote in his memoirs that Bronson was a very reserved sort who guarded his privacy strictly. They apparently had no problem on the set of Bronson's film Breakheart Pass which John Mitchum had a small part.

Mitchum and Brynner got along however which was not always the case with Brynner. Yul Brynner was a man of some mystery who liked it that way, he was and could be standoffish with fellow players, but apparently he and Mitchum worked well together in their only joint film.

The film was shot in Spain and I have to say the battle sequences were very well staged. They are the best part of Villa Rides.

A good, but not a great film. I do have to wonder that when Black Jack Pershing came into Mexico later on after the action of this film concluded, might not Mitchum be in a real jackpot fighting against the American army at that point.