Telly Savalas put on a passable (but no better than that) performance as Pancho Villa, the notorious Mexican bandit/revolutionary in this account of Villa's raid on the town of Columbus, New Mexico in 1916. Villa is not really a historical figure who I'm overly familiar with, so I won't say much about the historical details of the film. As a movie, this isn't great, although it has a smattering here and there of both action and humour. Chuck Connors' performance as Colonel Wilcox, commander of the U.S. Army base near Columbus struck me as a bit over the top, and Clint Walker as Villa's Gringo sidekick Scotty didn't really do very much for me. The movie is obviously a pretty low budget effort of limited technical quality. For a movie with a runtime of only slightly over an hour and a half I have to say that this movie dragged in places, particularly in the last 20 minutes or so. Villa's raid into the United States was an interesting (if, in the overall scheme of things, not especially important) historical sidebar, and probably deserved better treatment than this. 4/10
Review of Pancho Villa
