Vera Cruz is a 1954 American war film starring Gary Cooper, Burt Lancaster, Denise Darcel, Sara Montiel and Cesar Romero. The Technicolor Western was directed by Robert Aldrich from a story by Borden Chase. It is considered one of the most influential Western movies ever filmed.[citation needed] The film's amoral characters, Mexican setting, and cynical attitude towards violence (including a scene where Lancaster's character threatens to murder child hostages) was considered shocking at the time, and influenced future Westerns such as The Magnificent Seven, The Wild Bunch, and the films of Sergio Leone.
During the Franco-Mexican War, ex-Confederate soldier Ben Trane (Cooper) travels to Mexico seeking a job as a mercenary. He falls in with Joe Erin (Lancaster), a lethal gunslinger who heads a gang of cutthroats (including Ernest Borgnine, Jack Elam, Charles Bronson, and Archie Savage). They are recruited by Emperor Maximilian (George Macready) to help escort Countess Duvarre (Denise Darcel) to Vera Cruz.
Trane and Erin discover that the countess and Marquis Henri de Labordere (Cesare Romero) are secretly transporting a large cache of gold intended for the French army. All concerned, including Juarista secret agent Nina (Sara Montiel), conspire to steal it for their own purposes. Also involved in the mix is Morris Ankrum as a heroic Juarista leader.
In the end, Trane and Erin face off in a showdown.
I don't know if it's the greatest Western ever, but this little number has to be about the most *Root-Tootin' & Shootin'* son-of-a-gun Western ever made, and is also said to have been the inspiration for Italian Western Spaghetti master Sergio Leone.
We're talking about Burt Lancaster, and Gary Cooper, shooting up the high-heavens down in Old-Mexico, as mercenaries in Northern Mexico during the reign of Spanish ruler Maximilion. Cooper has aged signifiganctly since his legendary role in High Noon, and of course would die all too early in 1961. But the career of Burt Lancaster was only beginning, as he would go on to be a contemporary American star as well, and was a year removed from his Academy nominated role in 1953's "From Here to Eternity" with Frank Sinatra and Monty Clift. Gary Cooper is of course a Hollywood God (Tony Soprano often references Gary Cooper; the strong-silent type); and Lancaster, in addition to being one of the best actors in the world for a span of over 40 years, was descended from a family of circus acrobats and was one of the best pure athletes to ever grace the screen. He plays the ultimate mytholized gun-slinger--decked out in black leather set against his flaxen blond locks, carrying two guns-- and he and the older (but always stoic) 'Coop' really shoot out the lights in this one: Including one scene at the Maximillion's palace where the protagonists proceed to shoot the wicks out of flying candle sticks to prove their superioty to the Spanish gunfighters. The fact that it's friggin' Burt Lancaster and Gary Cooper gives the scene such credibility that your American (and TEXAS) pride swells with every shot fired.
Ultimately, each character's moral ambiguity leads to a final gunfight between the friends as the young and limber Lancaster faces off against the aged, oak-strong Gary Cooper. Burt's character takes on the villian role while Cooper (a priori) takes the moral high-road. In one of the best finale gun fights to any Western ever made, the younger, flashier, flaxen Lancaster is all set to 'smoke' the older Cooper; however, the ole 'Coop' proves to be too much for the kid.
