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One of my all time favorites.

hyped garbage

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

What we have here is a generally compelling, viscerally effective Western drama, the first of six teamings between actor Charles Bronson and filmmaker Michael Winner. Written by Gerald Wilson, it spins the yarn of Pardon Chato (Bronson), a half-Apache man who guns down a bigoted sheriff in self defense. A character named Quincey Whitmore (a rock solid Jack Palance) gets together a fairly large posse to hunt Chato down, but they are led into forbidding territory where their quarry seems to hold all the cards.Fear, ignorance, lust, and hatred rear their ugly heads in "Chato's Land", as good as any an examination of the poor attitudes that white men harbored towards Indians. Quincey is a lone dissenting voice; even while taking the mission seriously, he at least has respect for, and some understanding of, the man his team is hunting. Unfortunately, among this group we have the Hooker family, consisting of a horny creep, Earl (Richard Jordan), and a thoroughly racist heel (Simon Oakland), who ends up wanting revenge.Winner assembles here a very fine male ensemble (the kind of thing that Walter Hill would end up doing so well several years later), one in which women have not much of a role to play. (Sadly, the one woman who does, Chato's girl (Sonia Rangan), is molested and left tied up in the nude to serve as bait.) The cast features very reliable stars and character actors. Bronson offers one of his most stoic and mystical roles. He has VERY little dialogue to utter. Palance and Oakland are standouts; also co-starring are James Whitmore, Richard Basehart, Ralph Waite, Victor French, William Watson, Roddy McMillan, Paul Young, and Raul Castro.Excellent music by Jerry Fielding and vibrant photography also help to make this good entertainment. Be warned, however: it does get rather grim, racking up a large body count by the time it has finished.Seven out of 10.

Chato's Land was a pleasant surprise, due to its mixed reception and that the type of film that it falls under is not always my thing I was not expecting an awful lot. But seeing as the cast was a good one on paper I thought, why not? Chato's Land is not going to be for everybody, it's very gritty and violent(some of it being not for the faint-hearted, the most memorable of it actually being very brutal) and Michael Winner's films are the kind that will entertain some and not be others' cup of tea.The film is a touch overlong and gets a bit draggy in spots, while the ending is rather abrupt and rushed- sure it was intended to be ambiguous but for me there was the feeling of uncertainty of how to end it- and the day-for-night lighting/shooting is awfully obvious. Jerry Fiedler's music score compliments the film well and dynamically orchestrated but could have had a more sweeping punch and with less of a TV series and workmanlike pace. However Chato's Land was a pretty good film, apart from the day-for-night it's reasonably well made with splendidly gritty scenery and handsome photography that suits the atmosphere. Chato's Land is also very intelligently scripted with some remarkably literate dialogue, the direction from Michael Winner is above competent at least pacing and technically-wise and the story mostly is well-paced and compelling.In terms of action, that in Chato's Land is sparse but when it does appear it really does pack a punch. For an action/Western film, what was really impressive about Chato's Land was the way the characters are written. The characters here are very interesting and with plenty of layers, Captain Whitmore is a very multi-faceted character and perhaps the most multi-faceted role of Jack Palance's career. The great performances help(apart from for my tastes the hammy one of Richard Jordan), Charles Bronson has rarely looked better and brings a real commanding charisma every time he appears, very telling even when not saying very much. James Whitmore, Richard Basehart, Simon Oakland and Ralph Waite give solid support but best of all is Jack Palance, who is superb in one of his better and more layered performances.Overall, far from perfect and not for everybody's tastebuds but a pretty good film. 7/10 Bethany Cox

The storyline to Chato's Land is simple as can be. A half-breed Indian is harassed by a redneck sheriff while having a drink in a bar. He is forced to kill the racist and is then pursued out into his desert homeland by a posse hell bent on retribution. Very little time is spent on setting the scene; the basic set-up is underway in less than five minutes. The director is Michael Winner, who it's probably fair to say is famous for having a somewhat sledgehammer approach to film-making. His style is very unsubtle and his movies are often pretty tough, violent and unpolitically correct. You could almost view him as an English version of the Italian director Umberto Lenzi. As a result, his films are a lot of fun.This one is almost like a blueprint for Winner's later box office smash Death Wish in many ways. Both star Charles Bronson as a man whose wife has been raped by thugs and who chooses an eye for an eye style of violent retribution to put matters right. You could also definitely say that Chato's Land also fits into the revisionist western category too – although admittedly with a healthy slice of exploitation content added in for good measure – as it can quite easily be read as another early 70's Vietnam allegory. American might and arrogance comes a cropper against a less well equipped enemy. The invaders have far more gun power but they fail to take into account the environment they enter – the land understood perfectly by the enemy they seek. They commit various atrocities along the way such as setting a village on fire and then finally rape and murder. So there are underlying themes in this one but you don't really need to know any of this historical context to enjoy it because this works just great as a western with plenty of violent action.It's not immediately obvious but this is a Euro Western. It was shot in Spain but with British money. As a result it's maybe no surprise that it resembles the Italian spaghetti westerns in some ways with its amoral characters and violence. Charles Bronson is the star name in the title role. He looks and acts the part just fine but he has virtually no dialogue and the main focus is squarely on the squabbling posse led by Jack Palance. Chato is always on the periphery, which works well as we never know when he will strike. He begins by toying with his pursuers, leading them on a dance but he changes tack after the rape of his wife and murder of his son and seeks bloody revenge. The posse are, therefore, a very unsympathetic group. But they aren't all one dimensionally evil – there are the bad-bad guys but also the good-bad guys. There are a lot of grey areas and the motivation behind each man varies quite a bit. And the order in which they are bumped off is not in the least predictable either.Chato's Land is a pretty straightforward and enjoyable revenge western though. It's sometimes a little rough around the edges it has to be admitted. Occasionally it appears to have been edited with a hacksaw – for instance there is no build up whatsoever to the sudden arrival of the cowboys at Chato's family home – but this isn't really that much of an issue overall and in some ways adds to the raw feel of the movie. It's a film I have seen several times over the years and I always find it to be pretty successful and satisfying.

Chato's Land is another classic from the legendary Charles Bronson.He was a man who's actions spoke louder than words and this is proof of that fact.Bronson plays Pardon Chato,an apache who shoots a racist sheriff in self defence and is then hunted by a posse led by Quincy Whitmore played brilliantly by Jack Palance.The hunt then turns against the hunters when Chato leads them into apache territory where he is in charge and knows it inside out.The hunters then realise they have underestimated their opponent because in Chatos land Chato is the hunter and Whitmore and his posse are now the hunted.Charles Bronson probably speaks 10 lines at the most and most of his lines are spoken in apache while a lot of focus is on the supporting cast.This was the first of six movies starring Bronson and directed by Michael Winner.Though Winner has become the butt of jokes and criticism in recent years his movies of the 60ties defined the decade and in the 70ties his revenge movies set the bar for all revenge movies that would follow and that should not be forgotten when talking about Michael Winner.This is a gritty,violent revenge story and is an underrated masterpiece.Far better than modern westerns of today.