The Revengers

There’s a moment in The Revengers where William Holden, having just discovered his family massacred by Comanches, is meant to convey the sort of gut-wrenching anguish that transforms a man into an angel of vengeance. The scene doesn’t work. Holden, who shines in later scenes of lesser intensity, seems uninterested. It’s the first misstep in a film that keeps getting in its own way.

The story is familiar territory: Holden plays a decorated Union veteran who’s carved out a peaceful existence in post-Civil War Colorado. When Comanches, led by a white comanchero, slaughter his family, he sets out for revenge. So far, so conventional. But then the film takes an interesting turn, as Holden recruits his revenge squad from a Mexican prison, giving us a sort of Dirty Dozen south of the border.

The film’s greatest assets are its visuals and its supporting cast. Shot in Panavision, the Mexican locations provide a fresh backdrop that sets it apart from both the California-shot Hollywood westerns and the Spanish-filmed spaghetti varieties. The production design shows remarkable attention to detail – every weathered log in Holden’s cabin, every mud-caked corner of the army forts feels authentically lived-in.

Among the prisoners, Woody Strode nearly steals the show, matching Holden’s screen presence beat for beat, while Ernest Borgnine delivers a deliciously duplicitous turn as a sniveling opportunist. Once Holden settles into revenge mode, he essentially reprises his Wild Bunch persona—right down to his wardrobe—which proves more effective than his earlier dramatic scenes.

But just when the film seems to be building to a satisfying climax, it takes an odd detour into melodrama, introducing Susan Hayward as a nurse with an Irish accent that wanders across the Atlantic. This segment feels like it belongs in another movie entirely—one more interested in psychological depth than the preceding adventure story. The film seems to realize this too, hastily abandoning this subplot and returning to its revenge narrative as if nothing happened.

Director Daniel Mann clearly knows how to compose a handsome shot, but when it comes to action, he seems stuck in an earlier era. Where Sam Peckinpah and Sergio Leone were revolutionizing screen violence with balletic brutality and operatic staging, Mann gives us thoroughly conventional sequences of men clutching wounds and horses tumbling in clouds of dust. It’s not that these scenes are poorly executed, just that the poverty row westerns of the 1930s were doing them just as well forty years prior.

The Revengers is a film that might have been great with a tighter script and a director more attuned to the changing language of screen violence. As it stands, it’s a handsome but uneven western that’s worth watching for its outstanding cinematography and strong supporting performances. It’s the kind of film that reminds you of better movies while never quite measuring up to them—but sometimes, that’s enough.