La venganza de un hombre llamado Caballo

The English gentleman known as Horse (Richard Harris), returns to the American west to save his adopted Indian tribe from extinction.

According to Roger Ebert, "The film reveals its basic white-chauvinist bias, but it certainly seems to take itself seriously. It's of average length, but paced like an epic. There are four main movements in the plot: Return, Reconciliation, Revenge and Rebirth. If this seems a little thin for a two-hour movie, believe me, it is, even with all that portentous music trying to make it seem momentous." The film as a whole is not remarkable. Allegedly this is the film that convinced George Lucas to hire the director for "Empire Strikes Back", arguably the best of the "Star Wars" franchise. But this movie, I don't know... aside from the race issues (a white man intervening t save the Indians, and the Indians being played almost entirely by whooping, stereotypical white actors) it is just a bland movie. Even by sequel standards. Richard Harris is great, but he can't save this one.

This is a weak sequel: it lacks the interest and light touch of the magnificent "Man Called Horse" in nearly every aspect and when compared to each other they hardly seem to be the same genre.

The Return is almost a parody of the first and tries to evoke different Indian ceremonies but comes across as trying way too hard to bottle the magic of the first. In this film the tribe is lost and abandoned, having lost their homelands, modern life has encroached on paradise and they are living in abject misery and poverty. Perhaps this is the point: the first film took us to a place where we would want to be, a simpler time. This takes us to broken Indians in a miserable world and the White Man is the hero and savior which rather negates the whole idea of the film.

The beauty of the first lay in the fact that the white man learnt and discovered that real civilization lies in values rather than western materialism. In the second film this is all but lacking and so we end up with a weak film.

A huge disappointment.

This is a gritty, tremendous sequel, and I would say, better than the first film, from director Elliot Silverstein. Not for the squeamish, it is bloody, realistic in terms of action and battle, fights sequences. I agree that the bad white men and the good Indians was not that new in 1976 film industry - a good thing though - but it doesn't matter for me. Richard Harris is better than ever in this second movie of the franchise. The Indians way of life, daily life is very authentic, and I guess the research for writing was very serious, accurate and that adds much to the power of this film. Among the best westerns dedicated to Indians.

I thoroughly enjoyed A Man Called Horse when it was released in 1970, but Return played like a typical sequel. Everything about it -- budget, script, plot, casting, and acting -- was inferior to the original. Gale Sondergaard as Elk Woman, an elder of the Yellow Hand tribe, looks nothing like an Indian, and neither do half of the other "Indians," who were played by Italians, Mexicans, and Latinos with cheap wigs. And the old guy who played the chief acted more like a fat old squaw than a fierce leader of warriors. He even used the bow like a woman! Finally, Richard Harris, who did such a superb job in the original, seems to be coasting this time around. I guess he couldn't resist the easy paycheck he got for reprising his role as Horse.

To be fair, there are some interesting moments in the movie, such as Horse's undergoing a painful purification ritual to "find his vision" and rally the Yellow Hands against their Indian enemies and white oppressors, but on the whole, Return is uneven, boring, corny, and predictable -- just like most sequels.

Good reviews here generally averaging 6 stars out of 10 except for one tortured soul So I'll cheerfully add this review although upon reading you no doubt find it completely unusable With our small joyful entourage we saw this as guests of one of the main cast members, as a pre-release screening, I believe it was at the studio in Century City I was delighted to meet the producer Sandy Howard, one of the main cast members Geoff Lewiswas there, other cast members, the reporters were there and also Gale Sondergaard making a comeback after many years (my mother was delighted!) Great fun, so this is my valuable advice to you--get invited to a preview, you'll feel more important and the movie will be better!