The Ballad of Gregorio Cortez

Surprised that there are not more reviews for this intelligent, sensitive film about racial prejudice and injustice, Texas style, that I'm sure was shown in many a Lone Star State, high school social studies class back in the eighties. Nowadays, of course, GregAbbott and his MAGA minions would deride it as "woke" and try mightily to suppress it. But I digress.

I am not as enthusiastic about this film as the majority of my fellow reviewers, though. It's kind of like eating kale. You know it's good for you but it lacks flavor. Maybe that is because, as written by Victor Villasenor and director Robert M Young, the title character is not really a character at all but, rather, a symbol of victimhood. And while you may like symbolism I find it to be a bore. Give me a flesh and blood person with plenty of ambiguities any day over the suffering saint portrayed by Eddie Olmos. Someone, say, like sheriff Frank Fly, by leaps and bounds the most interesting person in the movie, perfectly played in all his flawed goodness by the great western character actor, James Gammon. And when you find yourself extolling the virtues of Fly over Cortez as a believable human being in a film called "The Ballad Of Gregorio Cortez" it is time to give said film a C plus.