Jess had just ridden into town from what looks like Beautiful Landscape Valley, AZ. He gets off his horse wearing crossed bandoliers with bullets for the elephant gun that he must have left behind. He holds up his hands to the locals, who look relieved, and then walks into the bar with his pistol and a bunch of ammo in his holster. 

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Jess orders a tequila and proceeds to have a comically bad conversation with the young Mexican bartender, who calls him Charro. A lot.

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 “Has someone come in today, looking for Jess Wade?”

 “No, Charro.”

 “No one at all? Asking about Jess Wade?”

 “No, Charro. No man has asked for anyone.”

 “Not a man. A woman.”

 “No, Charro. No woman has asked about Jess Wade.”

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And then Jess delivers this gem of dialog:

 “A beautiful woman didn’t come in? Maybe not beautiful to you, but beautiful to me…”

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So either Jess thinks this bartender that he’s never met before knows his taste in women, or the writer is dancing around saying “white woman.”

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The scene quickly moves on to Jess figuring out he’s been set up by the gang he used to ride with. He tries to shoot his way out of the bar through the front door, where the guy that’s clearly been standing outside the front door catches him “’off guard.” Good thinking, Jess.

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The gang slowly takes Jess’s gun and slowly rides him out of town and slowly sets up the whole rest of the movie. It turns out the band of misfits and idiots Jess used to hang with has somehow managed to steal a “Mexican Victory Cannon,” a pretend thing that is basically a solid gold cannon. The gang’s leader, Vince, summoned Jess to rub his nose in it, and let him know that they framed him for the theft. See, while the cannon was being stolen, a guy got shot in the neck and lived. They got word out that that guy was Jess. So now they just have to brand his neck and set him free to take the heat.

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Orrrr, for him to go to town, work things out with his old buddy Sheriff Dan, wait for the gang to come to town, and get his revenge.

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So yeah, the movie has some potential. And as we’ve seen in a number of movies, with good direction, Elvis can actually act. Sadly, Charro! suffers from bad direction and sloppy screen writing, both by Charles Marquis Warren*, who did a lot of Gunsmoke and Rawhide before Charro!

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Aside from the ridiculous opening bar scene, there are a number of scenes where Jess talks to people (his [ex?] girlfriend, the sheriff, the doctor) to clear up what happened, and he never, not once, just says “I stopped riding with those guys a year ago. And then they stole this cannon and framed me. And then they branded my neck. And they’re dicks.”

 

Nope. Then exchanges always go something like this:

 Jess: “What have you heard?”

 Other person: “That you stole the “Mexican Victory Cannon.”

 Jess “Do you believe that?”

 Other person: “I think you’ve been riding with Vince’s gang, and it sounds like something Vince’s gang would do.”

 Jess: “Oh, Vince was involved all right.”

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Thanks for clearing that up, Jess.

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The director made one genius move. There is a character in the gang, Vince’s brother Billy Roy, who is played as an absolute lunatic by Solomon Sturges. There is not a scene where Billy Roy is not screaming and hollering and wide-eyed and jumping off the walls. It is a tour de force of overacting, and it serves two purposes. It’s entertaining as hell, and whenever he and Jess are in the same scene, it makes Elvis’s performance look subtle and nuanced.

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Charro! was Elvis’s big return to “real” acting, so everything is very serious, and the musical numbers are non-existent. There is one song sung by Elvis, the title track, and it’s a winner. It somehow manages to steal from Ennio Moricone and the James Bond theme, while coming up with every possible rhyme for Charro in three and a half minutes. If only the rest of the movie was as well executed as the theme song.

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ACTING: 5 Elvises

MUSICAL PERFORMANCES: 7 Elvises

BEST SONG: “Charro!”

STUNTS: shoot outs, fights, branding, capturing and breaking a wild horse in a few minutes

CRINGE FACTOR: Mexican extras, can can girls

KISSIN’: Maybe one

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*Charro! was Charles Marquis Warren’s last movie. This is the second time in a row that a director made a movie with Elvis and gave up the biz. If Elvis had continued to make movies, there would eventually have been no directors left.

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