Shalako

Despite the successes of some Westerns in recent years, cinema audiences still seem ambivalent about the genre. In the late 80s and early 90s there was quite a resurgence with Young Guns, Dances with Wolves, Unforgiven, Open Range, and Tombstone. More recently we’ve had There Will Be Blood, True Grit, Appaloosa, 3:10 to Yuma and Cowboys & Aliens. The genre has expanded to include revisionist, noir, sci-fi, fantasy, horror, futuristic, contemporary and comic book westerns. Despite this, you will still occasionally meet people who’ll say ‘I don’t like Westerns’. For a genre to be discounted entirely seems rather dramatic, and may stem from a European distance to these movies (despite the efforts of Sergio Leone). It is perhaps down to films like Shalako, made in 1968, that the reputation of Westerns still sometimes suffers. Starring Sean Connery and Brigitte Bardot, it purports to be a more sympathetic Western – the Indians are not unreasonable savages, they just want their land. However, they are still men in wigs, their faces painted brown, screaming as they attack, simple-minded in their intentions. The film reminded me a lot of Zulu, made four years earlier, but with much more success. The title, Shalako, probably put a lot of people off. The entirely miscast Connery as the main character doesn’t help, nor does Bardot in a strange, uncharacteristic role (one of the few American films she’s in). It feels very much like, and probably was, a cast put together before a script. The film is in fact far smaller in scale than it purports to be. There are sweeping landscapes, but the plot follows only a few characters for little more than two days. They are attacked and surrounded by Indians and try to escape. Eventually they are caught again by the Indians and a final showdown is expected. What we receive at the end, however, is highly disappointing. There is no substantial conclusion or resolution. The real enemy, of course, as in all these movies, is the in-fighting between the white men. Shalako is as tremendously flawed as a film can be. We never have sympathy for any of the characters, despite Connery’s natural charisma, or Bardot’s beauty. It is in all a weird movie, probably better forgotten.