Wings Of The Hawk is set down in revolutionary Mexico during the teen decade of the last century and casts Van Heflin as an expatriate American mine owner who has his mine appropriated by Porfirio Diaz's local provincial administrator George Dolenz. That doesn't turn Heflin into a revolutionary sympathizer just yet. But when he saves Julie Adams from a gunshot wound with a little doctoring he's convinced of the rightness of their cause. It also helps that Julie fills those riding pants out real nice.Romantically the problem for Heflin is Rudolfo Acosta who already has a claim on Adams. He's part of the revolutionary band, but has grown over cautious of late.Abbe Lane plays Adams's sister and Dolenz's mistress. More should have been made of that situation than it was. It might very well have been left on Universal's cutting room floor. Of course we should have also seen more of Abbe Lane on general principles.Budd Boetticher directed Wings Of The Hawk and it certainly isn't up to the standard of the films he did with Randolph Scott. It's a routine action/adventure film, nothing more. Especially with Viva Zapata coming out the year before, a really great film about the same period.

There's no doubt that the director, Budd Boetticher, was a committed professional who loved Mexico and its culture. He was so determined to do a biography of a particular bullfighter that he ran out of money, lived in a shack, and ate from street vendors when he could afford it. It's one thing to do that when you're twenty, but Boetticher was in his forties.This early effort is a fairly routine Western except that instead of a corrupt cattle boss the heavy is a colonel in the Army of Porfirio Diaz. Van Heflin is a miner whose property is confiscated by the villainous and greedy George Dolenz. Dolenz not only has his men occupy the gold mine but kills Heflin's partner and is about to kill Heflin before Heflin is saved by the insurrectos.Guess who leads the rebels against the cruel Dolenz. Well, Rodolfo Acosta is the titular head but he's a coward and is deposed. Now it's Julie Adams' turn to "llevar los pantalones". And what pantalones they are. They seem painted on Julie Adams, which was I thought a nice artistic touch, although I prefer Julie Adams and her angular beauty to be on display in a one-piece white bathing suit under water in the Black Lagoon while being tracked underwater by a Gill Man with no good intentions. Make up has darkened her and tried to turn her into a Mexican but she still sounds like an Executive Secretary in Omaha. But who cares? Van Heflin can be a splendid actor in the right part but this isn't it. The character, like the story, is generic. It could be Audie Murphy or Randolph Scott. All the usual conventions are followed. One clip on the jaw and a man is knocked out for as long as the script requires. If there's a fist fight, the heavy will notice at some point that he's on the losing end of the affair and pick up a bottle or a piece of furniture to attack the hero.It's not a flop. It's just routine. Boetticher was to do some far more imaginative work with scripts written by Burt Kennedy and starring Randolph Scott. Boetticher's more accomplished direction and Kennedy's folk poetry dialog was a marriage made, well, maybe not in heaven but in cloud cuckoo land.

Irish (Van Heflin) has a mine in Mexico but when he strikes gold, the Federales commanded by Ruiz take it away from him, and while he is pursued by them his partner gets killed. He is rescued by the revolutionaries commanded by Raquel Noriega (Julie Adams). From then on Irish ends up helping them and falls in love with Raquel. Ruiz is married to Raquel's sister Elena (Abbe Lane). Julie Adams as a Mexican guerrilla fighter is outstanding, she even outshines a bombshell like Abbe Lane. Boetticher knows how to get the most out of the actors, and is a master when it comes to action scenes. Wings of the Hawk is entertaining from beginning to end, not a dull moment in this one.