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This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

The acting in this movie is really good.

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

A not very engaging biography of Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa, who as portrayed in this movie was a hero of the Mexican people and liberated them from the tyranny of government oppression.Really, the movie exists as a star vehicle for Wallace Beery, and he plays Villa the same way he played every character, as a sloppy, lovable lunkhead. The film rather humorously and without irony asks us to adore Villa even while portraying him as a sadistic, violent outlaw, as if it's not even aware that it's providing such an unsavory portrait of its main character. The film's rather dull over all, and even though I know it was a convention of the time, it's tough to tolerate actors like Joseph Schildkraut and Fay Wray made up in dark makeup to play Mexicans. And don't even get me started on the accents, which sound like they should be coming from anyone in the world other than people who actually were born and lived in Mexico.This film received four Academy Award nominations in 1934 but won only one of them, that for Best Assistant Director (John Waters, no not THAT John Waters). The other three nominations were for Outstanding Production, Best Writing (Adaptation), , and Best Sound Recording.Grade: C

VIVA VILLA! (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 1934), directed by Jack Conway, stars the Academy Award winning Wallace Beery ("The Champ" 1931) in one of his most notable film roles, that of the notorious Mexican bandit leader, Pancho Villa (1877-1923). Suggested by the book written by Edgcumb Finchon and O.B. Stade, the film itself is not so much an authentic biographical account on Villa's personal life, but, a fictional story scripted by Ben Hecht that gives its viewers an idea of what's to be shown: "FORWARD: This saga of the Mexican hero, Pancho Villa, does not come out of the archives of history. It is fiction woven out of truth, and inspired by a love of the half-legendary Pancho, and the glamorous country he served." For its eight minute prologue: "Mexico in the 1880s, a land cringing under the lone whip of Diaz the Tyrant," shows Pancho, the boy (Phillip Cooper) forced to witness his hard-working father (Frank Puglia) strung up at the whipping post for speaking out against a greedy Spanish landowner who has taken away his home and property along with his fellow peons. After the hundred lashes are carried out, the dead body is cut down, left on the street as a warning to the others. Later, Pancho, "the little avenger" during the night, awaits, stabs and kills his father's executioner, fleeing to the hills of Chihuahua. Years later, Pancho Villa, (Wallace Beery), the man, having earned the title of "La Cucaracha" (the cockroach), forms a bandit army, assisted by his trigger-happy henchman, Sierra (Leo Carrillo), to avenge the rich and give to the "peons." With the assistance of Johnny Sykes (Stuart Erwin), an American reporter for the New York World, Villa's name becomes well-known through the accounts printed in the newspaper. Don Felipe (Donald Cook) a wealthy landowner who sides with Villa's cause, introduces him to his friend, Francisco Madero (Henry B. Walthall), a gentle man known to all as "The Christ Fool." An eternal friendship forms as Madero offers Villa advise into helping him form a revolutionary Army. Though he does help with his cause, Madero is disappointed that Villa makes war as a bandit rather than a soldier. After the war, Villa, honored a hero by many, especially Don Felipe's sister, Teresa (Fay Wray), is soon exiled to El Paso, Texas, by orders of his rival, General Pascal (Joseph Schildkraut). After learning the assassination of President Madero, Villa returns to Mexico to avenge his friend's death, leading to another brutal revolution.Quite popular upon its release, earning an Academy Award nomination for Best Picture, VIVA VILLA! offers some very grim moments. Aside from the aforementioned flogging of Villa's father in the opening segment, another intense scene occurs indicating the method of torture towards General Pascal under Villa's orders. With females of minor importance, Fay Wray, the now legendary star of the original KING KONG (RKO Radio, 1933), surprisingly has a relatively small role as opposed to Katherine DeMille's temperamental Rosita Morales, as one of Villa's wives, who gathers more attention and screen time here. Wray's climatic moment occurs in a darkened room as her Teresa laughs hysterically at the angry Villa, forcing him to continually whip her, as shown through their silhouette images on the wall. This existing scene, among a few others, have vanished from circulating prints since the 1980s, shortening the original length from 115 to 109 minutes.Other members of the cast worth noting are: George E. Stone (Emilio Chavito, the artist who's rather draw pigeons than bulls); David Durand (The Mexican bugle boy who uses the American slang term, "ain't"); Paul Porcasi (The Priest); and, in smaller roles, Mischa Auer and Akim Tamiroff, among others.As much as its leading players could have been enacted by natural born Hispanic performers, such is not the case here. Beery's co-star, Leo Carrillo, would have made an agreeable Villa, with Gilbert Roland playing Sierra; and Mexican spitfire Lupe Velez in Fay Wray's part. Of the actors to have portrayed Pancho Villa in later years, Yul Brynnar or Telly Salavas for example, Beery, in mustache, large sombrero and Spanish dialect (which he tends to lose from time to rime) is as part of Beery as King Henry VIII or Captain Bligh is to Charles Laughton. Interestingly, Beery, having played Villa in the silent 1917 chaptered serial, PATRIA, would become a Mexican bandito once again in the western comedy, THE BAD MAN (MGM, 1941), where he not only physically resembles his Pancho Villa portrayal, but assumes the character name of Pancho Lopez. Stuart Erwin, who reportedly replaced Lee Tracy during production, might seem miscast at first, but acceptable considering how Tracy's familiar comedic style and gestures might have turned this bio-drama into a somewhat unintentional comedy.Reportedly controversial through its assumptions and enactment from the Mexicans point of view, VIVA VILLA may continue to be so today depending on its acceptance as a motion picture. The edited form taken from reissue prints of VIVA VILLA!, distributed to video cassette in 1993, is also the same presented on Turner Classic Movies cable channel. One can only hope a complete version of VIVA VILLA! will turn up again someday in honor of the man named Villa and the legendary song known as "La Cucaracha!" (***1/2)

Despite the beautiful scenery of and camera work capturing old Mexico, this is one of the worst movies I've ever seen. Pancho Villa does not for one minute look heroic in this movie, but instead comes off as a childlike buffoon with the inability to put two sentences together without bumbling with his words. I would never recommend this film to anyone. I understand that this was a different era in Hollywood, but this is why we still have English accents in all the Roman/Greek "gladiator" films and television shows. Some things in Hollywood don't seem to change. Hearing any actor trying to speak English with a "Spanish" accent, but with the old world Shakespearean classic "English" delivery is almost painful to my ears. "Oh... have I missed the execution?" Just horrible Hollywood, horrible. I wanted to see this movie, hoping that it would have some historical value to it. To give me a better insight to the life of Villa, and all I could sum up was that Wallace Beery's performance was better suited for an "Our Gang" short, where the kids were getting the better of this lummox. I kept expecting Spanky or Buckwheat to appear any moment throughout the film with the almost comedic delivery of this Mexican hero/bandit.Sadly, this movie would probably popular with college kids as one of those "drinking game" movies. Drink every time Villa says "Shut up" or the word "uh". Yeah, Pancho Villa the warlord, represented to the finest. Or when one of the Mexicans spoke and you couldn't tell if it was Shakespeare or not. And to find out that this movie won several awards... no, just no.

Wallace Beery was a complicated man. He was (from what I have read of him) a nasty customer in many ways - he skirted the edge of the law on several occasions. But he was an entertaining performer, in both drama (CHINA SEAS, THE CHAMP) or comedy (DINNER AT EIGHT, A DATE WITH JUDY). Although his Oscar (in the first tie vote in Academy history - with Fredric March in DR. JECKYL AND MR. HYDE) was for THE CHAMP, in some ways his most sympathetic role was as Pancho Villa in VIVA VILLA.It is rather curious that this film, the first really serious sound film to study the Mexican Revolution, picked up on Villa as the hero, rather than Francisco Madero, the original leader of the revolution in 1910. Madero appears in the film (played by Henry B. Walthall, in a good performance), but it is Villa's story (or what passes for it). He was more colorful than the unfortunate Madero, now best recalled for his murder in 1913 by General Huerta. Villa was a highly successful bandit (a model for Alfonso Badoya's great bandit in THE TREASURE OF SIERRA MADRES), who did support some amount of social reform for the lower classes - but he never was as committed to it as his southern rival Zapata. In fact, when Villa finally ended fighting the government, he retired to a large landed estate he had acquired.But he had great color...for good or bad. On one occasion he was giving an interview to a newspaperman, when he noted a drunken soldier who was making too much noise, so that he could not hear the newsman's questions. Quietly, without looking vicious or nasty, Villa took out his gun and shot and killed the soldier. He then resumed the interview with the horrified newsman. Villa was like that. He considered his killing someone like that natural. He was an odd man, very childlike at times, very cunning (to a point rather clever as a military strategist), and highly murderous when angered. He loved women, and would "marry" many to satisfy their scruples if they hesitated having sex with him. This led Theodore Roosevelt to make the rather loopy comment that Villa was an evil murderer and bigamist.Villa was also the last man in history (prior to Osama Ben Laden's tools) to attack the continental United States. Angered that President Woodrow Wilson stopped supporting him and his men in 1916, Villa attacked Columbus, New Mexico, killing several Americans. The failure of the Carranza government to arrest or catch Villa led Wilson to blunder into Mexican affairs by sending General John Pershing and a large armed force into northern Mexico to catch Villa. Villa led Pershing a merry chase, and finally the Americans had to withdraw in humiliation. Actually that was his highpoint as a public figure. Within two years his army was in ruins and he had to surrender to the government forces. He retired to his ranch, only to be assassinated by personal enemies in 1923.Beery was not the only actor to play Villa. Yul Brynner and Telly Savalas both played the role in films too. But the Beery film is best in making the Mexican into a tragic hero. He is an overgrown child, who needs a father figure to bring out his best side (briefly found in Madero), and does not fully know when he does wrong. But he also has a sense of right and wrong: witness his willingness to humiliate himself before his enemy General Pascal (Joseph Schildkraut), to save lives - only to find that Madero has pardoned him already. Later, when he learns that Madero was betrayed and murdered by Pascal, he captures the General and gives the latter a brutal punishment, but one that the audience fully supports.His friendship with the John Reed character (Stu Erwin as Johnny Sykes) shows that he was capable of being a more reasonable man, but was troubled by his behavior and his failures. He never did fully deliver the reforms to Mexico that he had pledged Madero he would bring. In the end, as he lays dying, Sykes is there to comfort him - telling him how Mexico will honor his memory. But he dies crying the line in the "summary" line above - what had he done wrong indeed!Not the historic Villa, but a worthy portrait of a fascinating man.