Vera Cruz is a film that’s often name-dropped in the discussion of Great and Influential Westerns. Starring genre heavy-weight Gary Cooper and Burt Lancaster, every synopsis you’re likely to come across promises a film with adventure, a Mexican countess, and bromance. Don’t believe them.
Cruz is set in the midst of the Mexican Revolution of 1866, a time when mercenaries and adventurers crossed the border in search of profitable employment. In fact, it’s the very same setting as Two Mules for Sister Sara, and if fanfiction had existed in the good old days, someone would have written a sexy crossover. Thank goodness it didn’t.
The film wastes no time in setting up Ben Trane (Cooper) and Joe Erin (Lancaster) as that most reliable of Western archetypes — the broken down Confederate, and the daring mercenary. Their characters are rigidly defined within the first ten minutes over the matter of horseflesh. Trane shoots his injured horse because it’s suffering.
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