An anti-epic based on a novel, it focuses on the cruelty of the Mexican Revolution and of the Mexican revolutionary and general Pancho Villa himself, contrary to most of the Mexican movies about this national hero.
The movie is thought to have been the first Mexican super-production and led to the bankruptcy of the film company that made it.
Plot
Villa was portrayed by Domingo Soler. Directed by Fernando de Fuentes, the film tells the story of a group of friends who hear about the revolution and Villa and decide to join him, only to suffer the cruel reality of war under the command of a Villa who simply does not care about his men.
The movie has two endings: the original ending shows the last surviving friend returning to his home, disenchanted with both Villa and the Revolution.
The second ending, discovered many years later, returns to the same scene ten years later, when an old and weakened Villa tries to recruit the last survivor again; when the father hesitates as he does not want to leave his wife and daughter behind, Villa kills the wife and daughter. The angry father then tries to kill Villa, before another man shoots the father dead. Villa takes the sole survivor, the son, with him.
Background
A great failure when released, interest in the movie resurged many decades later, and today is considered one of the best movies of Mexican cinema both for its approach to the theme and its technical merits. In 1994, a list of the 100 best films of Mexican cinema was published by Somos magazine: "Let's Go with Pancho Villa" was the number one film on the list.[1]
It stands apart among the many movies made about Villa in that it portrays the man and the Revolution in its cruelty; most other films, like those by Ismael Rodríguez in the 1960s, take an almost idyllic view of both, following the official (government) mythos.
