It's all about the two stars in this Western drama. Lee Van Cleef and Warren Oates square off in this tale about a maniacal bandit named Remy (Oates), who has his gang stage some wholesale slaughter while they make off with some booty from a robbery. However, it's vital that they obtain a barge in order to cross a river and make it to freedom. And the man in charge, Travis (Van Cleef), turns out to be a very cool customer. The balance of "Barquero" shows what happens as two men engage in a battle of wills.Being a fan of Van Cleef and Oates, this viewer would have liked to have enjoyed this a bit more. The problem for him was that the movie ended up overlong and didn't have as much tension as he would have liked. The frighteningly intense action scenes early on seem to be setting us up for something different; for several minutes there's a multitude of gunfire (and a rather hard edge to the proceedings that may turn some viewers off). "Barquero" ends up turning into a not uninteresting, if plodding, character study, as we get to see, bit by bit, the mental deterioration of the Remy character. He clearly wasn't expecting to have such problems trying to secure his transportation."Barquero" is a MUST for those who love Van Cleef and Oates, though. The two actors are at their best. Van Cleef is as cool as can be and Oates is wonderfully flamboyant. The strong supporting cast includes such familiar faces as fantasy genre star Kerwin Mathews (who's damn good as a Frenchman who rides with Remy), lovely Mariette Hartley, and the entertainingly weaselly John Davis Chandler. It's co-star Forrest Tucker, however, that steals much of the show. He makes the most of his colourful part as "Mountain Phil", who delights in showing Chandler his idea of fine cuisine.Decent enough guidance by journeyman director Gordon Douglas, excellent music by Dominic Frontiere, and gorgeous cinematography by Gerald Perry Finnerman help to result in a reasonably rousing show. The unusual action climax makes it worth the wait.Six out of 10.

Barquero has really no excuse for not living up to its full potential. The inspired casting choice of piting genre stalwarts Lee Van Cleef and Warren Oates in opposite sides of the river against each other and the idea behind the film – a group of ragtag cut-throats led by Oates transporting rifles and silver after a successful raid at a nearby town to the Sonoran territory in Mexico and desperately in need to cross the river before the army gets them while Lee Van Cleef as the boatman holds the barq at the other bank and refuses to pick them up. That should have been enough to keep Barquero afloat and my terrible puns at bay (ahem).What really keeps the film down is the unpolished, roughly sketched script. The first and closing acts sustain interest through lengthy bouts of gunfighting but some kind of semi-compelling plot needs to be assembled for the middle act where sadly Barquero fails to kick the conflict into high gear, a hard feat to accomplish with a story that seems to invite conflict and could have gone into so many different places. Instead what we get by the end of act two is the good guys outwitting the bad and saving the hostage Warren Oates was keeping tied up and Oates half mad and desperate (as the army draws closer with every passing moment) shooting holes at the water and saying to his henchman "I shot the river". Not particularly endearing, don't you think? Forrest Tucker steals scenes in the role of ant-eating Mountain Phil while Van Cleef and Oates seem to be representing two different western archetypes – Van Cleef the romantic hero eclipsed by the coming modernization of the west, represented in the movie by a bunch of squatters he's called to protect, Oates the rough-hewn, murderous son of a bitch, the gritty and hardboiled aspect of the western, pioneered at the time by spaghetti westerns of whose villains he's somewhat reminiscent of.Definitely better seventies westerns to keep the genre aficionado occupied out there but it's worth a watch for its marquee value, Van Cleef and Oates a dream match made in heaven and both in pretty good shape.

This is one of those often-overlooked types of movies that should have gotten a lot more consideration.Just a plain, down-to-earth western, with good guys, bad guys, a little bit of steaminess and a lot of action. It's delightful to watch just an ordinary ferryman outwit and outsmart a bunch of badmen, while enlisting the help of a town full of losers. Lee Van Cleef does a superb job!If you want to watch an old-fashioned shoot-'em-up with a hero, his "partner" and a whole lot of others thrown in to make it interesting, then this is the movie for you.Quite simply put, it should be shown on The Western Channel a lot more often - and it should definitely be released on DVD - what are they waiting for? I loved it if only for the fact that it does NOT have gobs of special effects all done with computers!!

Finally saw this tonight, its been called the "most Italianate of American Westerns" by some critics (more so than Eastwoods contemporary Hang em High) and I'll have to admit it really starts off like gangbusters, after the unusual opening credits sequence (its shot to resemble an oil painting looking as if the film is being projected upon a canvas). Director was Gordon Douglas who did "Rio Conchos", "Chuka", "Them", "Robin & The Seven Hoods", and "In Like Flint" to name a few. Its initial first half has a way more SW feel to it than "Hang Em' High".Unfortunately what I watched was a fullscreen pan & scan a bit blurry with the colors seeming a bit too strong, recorded off a broadcast so it wasn't quite the best way to watch it.It was shot on location in Colorado.We see two groups, a small army of mercenary outlaws and a trio riding in opposite directions with a river valley in the b.g. One side of the river leads to the Mexican border.Lee Van Cleef is Travis the Barquero the ferryman, and we see him plying his trade as he pulls a wagon of settlers across, his only weapons are a bowie knife and some sort of long range rifle of a Sharps or Spencer type. He has one prop from his SW days and that's his "Angel Eyes" tobacco pipe.We first see (Jack Remy) Oates in bed with a plump sweaty Hispanic whore Layeta, wearing his black hat with a fancy gold hat-band in a saloon/whore house the "Double Eagle" in the town of Buckskin (very frontier looking with a lot of log cabin buildings), he's looking his sleaziest best. Some sample dialog.Whore (fawning) "am I not beautiful senior"? Jack (looking disgusted) "I need a drink". Whore "Say it senior." Jack "you're beautiful...oh are you beautiful". Whore "why do you wear your sombrero"? Jack " why do you wear your stockings" Whore "because they are pretty" Jack "my hat's pretty"a bit later the whore is splashing perfume on herself while singing...Whore "do I smell senior'? Jack "yea you sure do".The massacre of the town starts and Jack is shooting from the windowA Mexican male breaks into Jacks room and asks "whats going on"Jack "we're shooting people". and Jack blows him away. Jack to whore "you live in a lousy neighborhood, you ought to move".Jack is in his command post for the raid on the town by his small army of misfits. Their goal is the bank and a shipment of Winchester Rifles that an army patrol is escorting. Oates' second in command is a Frenchman Marquette (Kerwin Matthews). Jack dresses, Layeta asks "Senior wouldn't it be nice to take Layeta with you" Jack "no" Layeta "will I see you again"? Jack "I don't think so" and he shoots her.The action sequences are pretty good throughout the whole massacre. There are some very good character actors Forrest Tucker (Mountain Phil ) puts in an over the top memorable performance as a mountain man. All I remember of Tucker is his TV (F Troop) performance but he's a hoot in this flick too.Marie Gomez plays Nola (Chiquita from The Professionals) she is Travis's woman. Mariette Hartley plays the unfaithful wife of a "squatter" who offers herself to Travis (a type of person she loathes but is attracted too) if he'll save her husband, he does, and she does, and Nola doesn't mind.The film looses steam unfortunately once the confrontation becomes a Mexican standoff at the river, it even quotes FAFDM with a bit where Jack smokes reefer and has a flashback but it just doesn't work. The flash back recalls how he got his hat, not exactly a major plot point, and it feels as if it was stuck in there just to be going with the flow of the late 60's early 70's idea of cool. The film had potential but ends up loosing its way and feels more like a TV program at the end. The barge battle was a bit hurried but you have to admit different.The final duel between Travis & Jack is flat has no dramatic build up at all, almost as if they ran out of time. Score is nothing special.Van Cleef should have had a bit more screen time he's just not featured enough in my opinion, but he is acting in a very different role, not a cool efficient killer, not and ex outlaw, not a drunk, more of a pioneering business man. And this, come to think of it in hindsight may have been his biggest career screwup, he was typecast for years by Hollywood as an outlaw, then he got that role of a lifetime as Mortimer, he could of, or at least his agent could have really tried to do (as Eastwood did and parlayed the MWNN character into an American film career) if they had held out. If he had played another strong Mortimer type in a successful American film here who knows how far he may have gone. This would have been a great Leone or Corbucci or Sollima film if they had the guts to bring an Italian director over and give him a budget, Peckinpah would have been excellent also, too bad, it was a unique story, and they would have made more out of it. This needs a widescreen DVD transfer release, please.