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Regular
Price $9.99
Starring:
Carmen Maura,
Terele Pavez,
Eusebio Poncela,
Sancho Gracia,
Ángel de Andrés Lopez,
Directed By:
Álex de la Iglesia,
Rated: Unrated
Release Date: 2002
Studio: TLA Releasing
Format:
AC-3,
Closed-captioned,
Color,
Dolby,
DVD-Video,
Subtitled,
Widescreen,
NTSC,
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Customer Reviews for
800 Bullets
Homage to Italian westerns could have been better
This homage to Spaghetti Westerns (those films made mostly in the 60s in Spain under Italian directors and actors using English names) could have been a bit better. Directed by Spanish director (and enfant terrible) Alex de la Iglesia, it starts as the story of a boy who leaves his home in order to search his paternal grandfather, Julian (Spanish veteran actor Sancho Gracia), a former movie stuntman who worked in those westerns and whose main claim to fame is to having been Clint Eastwood's double in some of those movies (he even had speaking parts in some of those, he claims). Spaghetti westerns are long gone, but the grandfather still ekes out a living working as a stuntman in a decrepit theme park in southern Spain dedicated to the American West. However, as the park attracts few visitors, developers (including the boy's mother, played by Almodovar regular Carmen Maura) are planning to bulldoze the place and build a new park. Julian, who originally received his grandson reluctantly, decides to fight back among his coworkers, with 800 real bullets, and a real gunfight erupts. The movie is not bad, but it becomes less interesting at times, and it fails to hit the right tone. Best bit: "Clint Eastwood"'s cameo at the end. Note: the film contains a scene where the boy is fondled by a naked woman that would be considered illegal in most countries (I don't know how they did get away with that).800 Bullets
(3.5 STARS) Spanish Cult Director's (Largely) Entertaining Homage to the Spaghetti Western
"Accion Mutante" "Dying of Laughter" and "Perdita Durango." As these film titles suggest, Spanish cult director ?lex de la Iglesia had never made an ordinary film. Just take a look at "Perdita Durango" based on the novel by Barry Gifford (also known for his works with David Lynch). It is full of anything that mainstream Hollywood pictures would cautiously avoid to show on the screen (and the film stars Rosie Perez and Javier Bardem -- what a combination!).
Surprisingly, ?lex de la Iglesia's `800 Balas' (`800 Bullets') is more accessible than his previous films, with more character-driven story and less acid satires. The film is set in `Hollywood Texas' in Almeria, Spain, an old dilapidated theme park doing Western shows for the tourists. As you know, many so-called `Spaghetti Westerns' were actually shot in this country, and "800 Bullets" is part homage to the minor genre that made Clint Eastwood worldwide famous. (And there is really a place named "Texas Hollywood" in Almeria, which inspired the story of the film.)
The film is basically about Juli?n Torralba (Sancho Gracia), down-and-out ex-stunt man bragging about his stunt works with Clint Eastwood and George C Scott in the 60s. Though his grandson Carlos admires him, eagerly listening to his stories, and loves the carefree life at the theme park in the middle of nowhere, Laura, Carlos's mother (Carmen Maura) despises Juli?n as a drunken liar in dirty clothes.
Things get serious when Laura as corporate executive takes over the land where Texas Hollywood is. Angry Juli?n buys 800 bullets to barricade in the place with his co-workers. It's not a show this time, it's a real war - in the Western style.
In spite of this unusual story, "800 Bullets" is no absurd farce. Though, like in the director's past movies, it has very sexual matter (including a young boy with a beautiful half-naked lady), it is more about the bond between Juli?n and Carlos, and the film works as such thanks to the good acting from the two leads.
Clearly the film is not for everyone. It is not without dull moment, and the family drama (though itself a good one) almost always comes with the director's acid humor that may be off-putting for some, but "800 Bullets" delivers after all especially for those who want to see something unique.
800 Bullets
Stock up on the ammo
In the wry, quirky little comedy,"800 Bullets," a young boy named Carlos goes in search of his paternal grandfather, a former movie stuntman whose claim to fame is serving as Clint Eastwood's double in the heyday of the spaghetti western - a fact he has been trying to parlay into a lucrative career for well over thirty years now, long after the western - spaghetti or otherwise - disappeared as a viable genre. But, oh, how the might have fallen, for when Carlos arrives, he finds Julian barely eking out a living working at what is little more than a broken down tourist trap - a long-abandoned western set stuck out in the middle of the Spanish desert where he and a small band of likeminded misfits put on a tawdry gunslinger show for the few paying customers who happen to wander their way. Carlos is, of course, thrilled with what he finds there - a world right out of the past replete with hangman`s noose and functioning brothel - but trouble begins when his mother, a real estate developer who holds Julian responsible for the death of her husband in a stunt accident years earlier, buys the place and threatens to bulldoze it to make way for a spanking new theme park she`s planning to build. It is at this point that Julian chooses to make a stand, buying 800 real bullets, gathering together his forces, and turning the site into his own mini-Alamo where he gets to participate in his very own shootout on main street with real guns and real ammo.
"800 Bullets" is fun right up until the moment when the actual shooting starts, then it turns heavy-handed and silly, trotting out that old chestnut about how only a fine line separates reality from fantasy - or, more accurately in this case, real life from celluloid life - and how only truly eccentric people ever get to cross it. But Sancho Gracia gives a wonderful performance as the craggy old has-been determined to prove himself a hero to his adoring grandson. Moreover, the setting is novel, the concept original, and the execution lighthearted and fast paced. It's true that at 121 minutes the movie is longer than it needs to be, and the closing scenes smack of last minute desperation on the part of the screenwriter. But director Alex de la Iglesia conveys a real affection for the conventions and style of those pasta-filled westerns from thirty and forty years ago - an affection that many moviegoers past and present frankly share.
(One caveat, however: there is a scene in the film in which the young boy fondles a [...] that would probably be considered [...] if it were made in the United States).800 Bullets
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