Vera Cruz is a Western from 1954 starring a pair of screen legends in Burt Lancaster and Gary Cooper and future icon Charles Bronson.
Directed by Robert Aldrich, he pushes the bar with characters that don’t care about right or wrong and has a shocking scene where Bert Lancaster’s character threatens to murder child hostages. This no doubt had to be a shocking scene during this era.
During the Franco-Mexican War, ex-Confederate soldier Ben Trane (Gary Cooper, You Can’t Take It with You, Cloak and Dagger) travels to Mexico seeking a job as a mercenary. He joins up with a thief Joe Erin (Burt Lancaster, Scorpio, The Killers), who leads a gang including Donnegan (Ernest Borgnine, Escape from New York) Tex (Jack Elam, Kansas City Confidential), and Pittsburg (Charles Bronson, Murphy’s Law) They are hired by Marquis Henri de Labordere (Cesar Romero, Lost Continent) to serve Emperor Maximilian I of Mexico (George Macready, Gilda, The Monster and the Girl) $25,000 to escort Countess Duvarre (Denise Darcel, Tarzan and the Slave Girl) to the city of Veracruz. On route to Veracruz, they discover that the there are six cases of gold coins totaling three million dollars. Ultimately, Joe Erin wants the gold for himself and is willing to kill anyone to get it. The already unholy alliance between Erin and Trane ends over the gold. But before that, they are trapped by The Juaristas, led by General Ramírez (Morris Ankrum, Them! The Thin Man Goes Home) and they want the gold too!
Vera Cruz is a lively and exciting Western with Cooper and Lancaster in top form. The supporting actors also are fantastic. This is such a great cast with Romero, Borgnine, Elam, Ankrum, and Charles Bronson all with great roles and dialogue. The action scenes are also fantastic with enough fighting scenes to satisfy that crave.
Kino Lorber has released Vera Cruz on Blu-ray and given the film a new 2K scan with improved results. The Technicolor is much more vibrant now, with richer, bolder, and stronger colors than previous MGM Blu-ray release. The film has very thick textures throughout. The daylight scenes in this release are something to marvel at. Lots of wonderful details of the landscape shine better than ever. Ernest Lazlo’s cinematography is simply breathtaking! Flesh tones look accurate, and film grain remains present. The image quality is something to marvel at with this release. I can’t say enough positive things about how good this movie looks now!
Vera Cruz has been given an English DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 soundtrack with many aggressive sounds, basically tons of gunshots being fired throughout. The musical score’s by Hugo Friedhofer are crisp and clear and the dialogue is easy to understand. No drop-offs, hissing or other issues were detected.
Filmmaker Alex Cox provides an excellent, well thought out commentary about the film and there are at least a dozen or more trailers for other Kino Lorber Western films.
This release of Vera Cruz is easily the best one available to date. Kino Lorber has done a tremendous job giving this film new life on Blu-ray. A great film that gets a superior release. Highly recommended!
Vera Cruz
Director- Robert Aldrich
Cast- Gary Cooper, Burt Lancaster
Country of Origin- US / Mexico
Distributor – Kino Lorber
Number of Discs – 1
Reviewed by – David Steigman
Date –11/14/2021