Hombre

"Hombre" is based on a novel by Elmore Leonard, and that's not hard to discern. After a lengthy set-up in a sleepy western town, we set off in a stagecoach, with a collection of skewed archetypes: There's the righteous hero (who happens to have been raised among Apaches, despite being white), the sniveling villain (who shows as much bravery as anyone else), and the fair lady (who's a better fighter than most of the men on board), for starters.

Leonard was always spinning well-worn genres and narratives by situating them in a more socially-aware world than most others would care to depict. This film (which is directed by Martin Ritt and stars Paul Newman in the title role, as the Apache-raised white boy) also bears the signs of Leonard's progressive political voice. Newman's hero goes through a character arc that explicitly frames white people as the "villains" of the west.

He's inevitably called into action by the stagecoach's inhabitants. And when he helps them, it's not for redemptions, or inclusion -- he's just not cold enough to let all these children of colonialists die without a fighting chance. He may be a hero born of the old West, but the politics on display here predict the 'revisionist westerns' of the 1970s, like "McCabe & Mrs. Miller" and "Little Big Man." "Hombre" regards the American west of John Wayne and Roy Rogers with nothing less than active disdain.

Twilight Time's Blu-ray release of the film includes two additional audio tracks: One isolates the score music by David Rose, and the other offers an audio commentary with film historians Lee Pfeiffer and Paul Scrabo. But the true jewel here is the high-definition transfer of James Wong Howe's cinematography. Westerns have never been the most colorful genre, but Howe pushes his dreary palette as far as he can. The film looks as though it's been overtaken by a layer of windswept dirt. That also looks forward to the revisionist westerns of the 70s, which were often marked by hazy photography -- perhaps "Hombre" helped to show the old west a new way forward.

"Hombre"
Blu-ray
$29.95
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