Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia
United Artists | Release Date: August 7, 1974 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
80
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 15 Critic Reviews
Positive:
12
Mixed:
3
Negative:
0

Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
Time OutStaff (Not Credited)
Readable equally as a bleak, brutal exploitation movie and as a horrified, humanist cry from a disturbed soul, Alfredo Garcia is a worthy rediscovery. Read full review
100
TV Guide MagazineStaff (Not Credited)
Bring Me The Head Of Alfredo Garcia does have some sloppy photography, a few unintentionally humorous scenes, and an excess of Peckinpah's signature slow-motion violence, but it stands as one of Peckinpah's more daring films. Read full review
100
Chicago Sun-TimesRoger Ebert
Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia is Sam Peckinpah making movies flat out, giving us a desperate character he clearly loves, and asking us to somehow see past the horror and the blood to the sad poem he's trying to write about the human condition. Read full review
100
Slant MagazineNick Schager
Like few modern films, Alfredo Garcia seems to not only be a product of a director’s singular vision, but a virtual window into one man’s fractured, tortured soul. Read full review
89
Austin ChronicleLouis Black
Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia is a profound existential adventure, twistedly comic and openly bitter, brought to life by those two maniacs: Peckinpah and Oates. Read full review
88
The Seattle TimesMark Rahner
Sure, it's one of the silliest titles of all time, especially if you make a drinking game of substituting words for Head? chair, spleen, lunch, etc. But it's a masterpiece from The Wild Bunch director Sam Peckinpah. [22 Mar 2005, p.H22]
83
The A.V. ClubKeith Phipps
The honesty behind Garcia's queasiest moments gives the film its pull. Read full review
80
EmpireDavid Parkinson
Bleak brilliance. Read full review
80
The GuardianPaul Howlett
It's all sweat, death and bloody retribution: one of Peckinpah's finest. [03 Apr 2010, p.53]
75
Chicago ReaderJonathan Rosenbaum
Certainly one of the director's most personal and obsessive works—even comparable in some respects to Malcolm Lowry's Under the Volcano in its bottomless despair and bombastic self-hatred, as well as its rather ghoulish lyricism. Read full review
75
San Francisco ChronicleWalter Addiego
This was probably Warren Oates' finest hour, and certainly one of director Sam Peckinpah's greatest achievements. [06 Mar 2005]
75
Seattle Post-IntelligencerWilliam Arnold
The film's story - about a gringo loser (Warren Oates) who digs up and decapitates a body to claim a reward - seems much less gratuitously shocking today, and its dated brand of macho pessimism has a nostalgic appeal. [14 Jun 2002]
60
The GuardianPeter Bradshaw
For a film renowned for its violence, Garcia unfolds at a leisured, almost lugubrious, pace with scenes allowed to unspool at a length that would never be allowed in any Hollywood thriller today. Read full review
50
The New York TimesNora Sayre
The movie's main problem is that the protagonist - the dead head - is a bore. Read full review
40
VarietyStaff (Not Credited)
Bring Me the Head of Alfred Garcia is turgid melodrama [from a story by Frank Kowalski and Sam Peckinpah] at its worst. Read full review
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