Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #12593 in DVD
• Released on: 2004-08-02
• Rating: Suitable for 15 years and over
• Number of discs: 1
• Format: PAL
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 92 minutes

Synopsis
Starring Antonio Banderas as the legendary Pancho Villa, Bruce Beresford's star-studded production brings to life a truly surreal story. In the early 1900s, Villa, the enthusiastic Mexican revolutionary, was looking for a way to support his cause. Enter master filmmaker D.W. Griffith (Colm Feore), who was trying to take cinema to a whole new level. The resulting partnership resulted in the film THE LIFE OF GENERAL VILLA, a picture that bravely blurred the line between fiction and reality. In the process, Villa became a cultural sensation, giving both men the acclaim that they desperately seeked. Written by Larry Gelbart, AND STARRING PANCHO VILLA AS HIMSELF is another finely crafted production.

Customer Reviews

viva villa!
i watched this movie and became a fan not just of the movie but of pancho villa. i therefore feel it is necessary to point out that although pancho may have been a bandit, revolutionary and sometime thief, he would not have murdered a woman in cold blood, and probably killed George Benton by mistake. however, i am not adverse to the telling of a good story and i love this film. the cavalry charge out of the train is probably the best i have ever seen on film and i was very pleased to find that at least the first part of the film is conducted in a mixture of english and spanish- it would be ridiculous to have villa speaking perfect english as he was barely literate in spanish (mexicano). to have a spaniard playing pancho villa is quite funny really, as villa hated the spanish, but i can't honestly think of a better person to play him than antonio banderas. he doesn't play pancho villa, he is villa. he acts with a perfect swaggering arrogance and is actually very funny. its definitly worth watching. i would reccomend this to anybody.

Entertaining romp distantly related to history
Although this is definitely based on fact the producers have, probably rightly, taken full advantage of a film maker's license to not let historical accuracy get in the way of a good story. The story does deal with serious issues such as whether the bad caused by revolutions is justified by the good and is given current relevance by an earnest sub-text about threats to US oil supplies and the inevitable response. As usual with Hollywood treatments of this subject the action is viewed through the response of an American interlocutor; presumably they do not trust their audience to have the maturity to be interested in Mexican history otherwise.

However, the film is best viewed as entertainment. It's well written and well acted (despite the somewhat strange casting of Jim Broadbent as an American movie mogul and the often disturbing resemblance between Banderas' Villa and Graeme Souness) and clearly benefits from a budget big enough to convincingly represent the scale of the conflict that was the first major revolution of the twentieth century. Recommended.