Joshua (1976)

Brilliant and touching

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

Just intense enough to provide a much-needed diversion, just lightweight enough to make you forget about it soon after it’s over. It’s not exactly “good,” per se, but it does what it sets out to do in terms of putting us on edge, which makes it … successful?

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

We've seen the vengeance-chase thing, the silent hero thing so many times and, with "Joshua" it's a case of here we go again, this time with lesser results.Fred Williamson acquited himself well, but the rest of the cast could have used some bad guy acting lessons.The music could have used less excess. At one point it sounded like somebody was just learning to play "Chopsticks."Also unnecessary was the 'bosom' scene. We all knew she had one. Jeez! I must say they were more 'bazoom' than your everyday bosom.The fight scene was quite something with sound effects unlike any ever heard before. It was weird. When they bonked each other it sounded like a symphony ocrchestra bass drum. By the way, every now and then it looked like they came close to connecting.The scenery was excellent, the horses were pretty. "Joshua" did well when he fought the battle of Jericho. This Joshua had more of a struggle, minus God in his corner.

Joshua starring Fred Williamson in the title role tells the story of a returning black civil war veteran who finds his mother murdered and some other woman abducted by this gang of some really loathsome cretins. Of course Williamson's duty is clear.The film was shot in the sacred John Ford country of Monument Valley, Arizona which as a tourist spot boasts of its fame as a location for some of the best westerns ever done. This however was not one of them.The story of Patty Hearst was fresh in people's minds and the woman abducted decides she likes it with the gang. Let's say she becomes less and less inhibited in her sexual relations with the gang and she's more like an outlaw groupie by the time the film ends.Unless you're a fan of Fred Williamson, pass this one by.

After a savage massacre of his mother and kidnapping a girl, the black rider (Fred Williamson) , a civil war veteran , set out a personal vendetta and a rescue against a band of outlaws . He carries the vengeance in his heart and goes after the baddies in an interminable pursuit . Former rules of the code of West are dated and he's is guided by unrelenting revenge . He embarks on a bloody reckoning and during his quest helps a beautiful Mexican woman (Isela Vega). The black rider travels the Soutwestern territories and crosses paths until finding nasties .This is an average Western revenge plenty of violence , riding chases , shootouts, grisly killings and results to be quite entertaining, in spite of some slow-moving scene s. The chief excitement lies in seeing what new and amazing victim can be executed by the revenger black rider, as the nasties are beheaded , hanged , dropped a rattle-snake or bombing by means of dynamite . With similar plot to Italian Western , whose main argument being ¨revenge¨ and likeness to ¨Chato¨ where Charles Bronson revenges , one by one , the killers his family . Displays extraordinary landscapes with glimmer cinematography like is well reflected on the breathtaking outdoors filmed in natural parks of Monument Valley . This Western with lots of action packs a boring and repetitious musical score by synthesizer . The film is starred by Fred Williamson , one of the first African-American male action star of the Blaxploitation of the early 1970s , including his filmography the followings : ¨Black Caesar¨ , ¨Hammer¨ , ¨The man bolt and Black eye¨ ; besides , Isela Vega who played Western for Cantinflas in ¨Por mis Pistolas¨ and Sam Peckinpah , in ¨Bring me the head of Alfred Garcia¨ . The motion picture was regularly directed by Larry Spangler , director and producer of ¨Legend and soul of Charlie¨ , again with Fred Williamson . The film attained lukewarm reception by the public and achieved limited success .

JOSHUA: THE BLACK RIDER (3 outta 5 stars) I am almost tempted to give this movie 5 out of 5 stars because it is almost perfect in its simplicity... a western movie can't get much more straight-forward than this: a man's mother is killed... and he spends the rest of the movie tracking and killing the men who did it. But, really, the acting is kind of poor and the direction is uninspired. There isn't really much dialogue so you can't say the script was well-done. Also, the movie is kind of slow... but personally I don't usually count that as a flaw... I *like* movies that take their time. Fred Williamson plays the title character... the bounty hunter bent on revenge for his mama's demise. The bad guys kidnap a woman along the way and rape her a few times but by the movie's end she has inexplicably allied herself with one of her assailants. Practically the entire soundtrack of this movie is a 90 second piece of faux-spaghetti-western music that gets repeated again and again and again... towards the end of the movie it almost becomes comical when that same old theme is repeated yet again. I think you need to *really* be a fan of westerns to like this one.. otherwise you are probably going to be bored beyond belief.