flufflynn I must say I was somewhat intrigued about this movie, seeing how there's Paul Newman, indians and all. Even so, it was quite the letdown. You come here for Paul Newman, you're in luck - his performance is good, even though his character isn't. Everything else though? Pretty awful. You can see the plot unfolding from miles away, it's just that obvious and dull. The other characters are equally uninteresting and transparent. There are far better westerns out there and, if you're reading this, do yourself a favor and don't watch this movie unless you really must. I sure regret watching it and that doesn't happen with many a movie for me.

julesfdelorme HOMBRE I have always had a strange relationship as a film fan to Paul Newman. Particularly when I was young I would have told you that the man just bugged me. I couldn't tell you why. Just that he did. And yet, two of my favourite movies then, and even now, are Cool Hand Luke and Hombre, both starring Paul Newman. I met the man once. I was doing security for a film read through, a film that never got made. We weren't told who the stars were or what the film was. Just that security was needed and we should be ready for anything. As people began to gather around the table to read, a few relatively minor stars then, showed up and immediately began to make obnoxious demands. They wanted to sit here or there. They needed a certain kind of water. They needed chairs for their entourages. And then Newman came bounding up the stairs in sneakers. No entourage. No fuss. Greeted every single person in the room. Did the reading. Thanked everyone. And left. And I remember thinking "Now, that's a real movie star. He doesn't need to prove a thing to anyone.". Yet that strange mental block remains. I can't bring myself to admit that I'm a Paul Newman fan. Perhaps it was because I was so obsessed with Steve McQueen as a kid. Still am. And I'm sure that I read somewhere early on that McQueen hated Newman because he felt Newman kept getting the roles that they competed for. There is something in our brains that gravitates towards that either/or way of thinking. The fact is that Newman was a great actor and a pretty damn good human being by most accounts, including my own, despite it being a very brief encounter. And the fact is that I love Cool Hand Luke. And I love Hombre, one of the few adaptations of an Elmore Leonard Western that really worked. For those of you who don't know, Elmore Leonard tried his hand at Western novels before he got into the crime novels that he is now so well known for. And Leonard was a very good Western novelist as well. Hombre is a fine example of this. The premise of a white man raised by Apache being forced to protect a group of white people that he doesn't care for, plays brilliantly with our ideas about what we call civilized behaviour. The most 'Civilized' person in the novel, a well educated, well manored professor has stolen money meant to feed the Apache people and shows us again and again his naked greed. While the man they all consider to be the least civilized, the white man who prefers the Apache to his own people, is the only one who shows integrity and courage. This conflict bubbles under the surface of a very good period Western, and in the film, Newman does a remarkable job of capturing Apache like mannerism. I lived among the Apache and Navajo on the Salt River Reserve in Southern Arizona, and I can tell you that they are a very special and unique people, even amongst other Natives. They do not move or talk or even seem to think like other people. There is a stillness to the Apache, and inner toughness, almost certainly derived from living in barren desert mountain terrain. And Newman captures that spirit extremely well. Frederic March, one of the great actors of early films, including Inherit the Wind, is excellent as the civilized yet greedy Dr. Favor and Richard Boone is impressively menacing as the main villain, Grimes. But it is Newman's movie through and through. He delivers a wonderful speech masterfully about the state of the Apache people, while cooped up in a mining shack with the others, all the while remaining unknowably stoic and still throughout. I don't know if you can argue that Hombre is a great Western. But it is definitely a very good one. And it is still definitely one of my favourite movies of all time. Maybe it's time that I admit that I am a Paul Newman fan. Maybe it's time I came out of the closet about Paul Newman. It's definitely time to admit that he is the star of two of my favourite movies of all time, Hombre and Cool Hand Luke. There I said it. I said that much. I love Hombre. I like Paul Newman. And I don't care who knows it.

Wuchak Released in 1967 and directed by Martin Ritt, "Hombre" is a Western starring Paul Newman as John Russell, a white man raised by Apaches on a reservation and thus disdained by the "respectable" stagecoach passengers traveling with him. Perhaps they'll respect him when he becomes their only hope for survival. The driver & passengers are played by Martin Balsam, Diane Cilento, Richard Boone, Fredric March, Barbara Rush, Peter Lazer and Margaret Blye."Hombre" is a gritty realistic mid-60s Western; a character study that stands the test of time. Seeing it today, it's hardly aged. Taken from Elmore Leonard's novel, the script effectively shows the illusion of high and low social standing: The proud are proud until uncontrollable events swiftly bring them to their faces; the decent are only decent until survival or lust can only be attained through indecency. This is a tale of survival and in the heat of life-or-death tribulation what's in one's heart comes to the fore.People complain that the climax leaves a sour taste, but it ends the way it must (see below).ADDITIONAL CAST: Skip Ward, Frank Silvera, David Canary, Val Avery and Larry Ward.The film runs 111 minutes and was shot mostly in Arizona, but also a couple scenes in Jean, Nevada and Bell Ranch, California.GRADE: A FURTHER COMMENTARY ***SPOILER ALERT*** (Don't read until watching the movie) John Russell tells the other passengers that they'll only survive their life or death situation by being very careful and shrewd. Ultimately, he decides to be UNcareful in order to save an unworthy uppity woman in response to Jessie's bold sympathy (at least she practiced what she preached). To survive, he relies on the inexperienced kid to take out the bandit while he shoots the main outlaw. Ironically, the kid's shot is blocked by the very woman Russell is trying to save.When the dust settles, the survivors are all revealed as seriously flawed one way or another, whether venal (Fredric March), arrogant (Barbara Rush) weak (Martin Balsam), green (the kid), morally dubious (Margaret Blye) or liberally naïve (Diane Cilento). The end leaves them speechless as unworthy sinners in the face of unmerited grace through Russell's bold sacrifice. They represent the viewer, you & me: We can take the grace offered us and live a life worthy of it or put it out of mind and continue in our folly. It is every person's plight.

lavatch "Hombre" is a motion picture combining the talents of two veterans of the famed Actors Studio in New York: director Martin Ritt and actor Paul Newman. The final movie in their multiple film collaborations, "Hombre" tells a good story with a nuanced message about the treatment of Native Americans.Newman plays the character named John Russell, whose background is that of a native of the Cherokee nation. Raised in the Cherokee culture as a boy, Russell now is starting out to make his way in the world of the men who destroyed his native culture.The action of the film is a lengthy story of survival where Russell is part of an entourage in a stagecoach that is robbed. The large stash of money was originally stolen by a doctor employed by the government to oversee the Cherokee reservation. Now, some desperadoes, led by Richard Boone in a star turn as the villain, attempt to rob the doctor. The money really belongs to the Russell's tribe, yet he is now in forced to choose whether or not to assist the bystanders in the stagecoach in a long march across the desert.SPOILER ALERT: The drama has some enormous plot holes, including the unexplained moment when the stagecoach is robbed, yet the thieves do not remember to take the money! Then, in the climax, Newman's character plans to kill the robbers, yet he too does not take the money bag that is to be offered for the exchange of the doctor's wife.Beyond the muddled narrative, the scenery of the Southwest is gorgeous, and Newman turns in an exemplary performance, especially in his understated reading of some excellent lines of dialogue.