The Milagro Beanfield War

I watched this a long time ago so my memory isn't perfect.

Arguably Robert Redford's most inchoate work, The Milagro Beanfield War has plenty of beautiful moments, but they don't quite add up to a worthwhile whole.

69.500

Corny. (Beany?)

A specimen of Capra-esque populism in minority clothing. The impish white-haired angel, for example, is pure Capra-corn (to borrow a coinage from Manny Farber); only the sombrero and serape are impure. Even at that, the regional exotica yields surprisingly few benefits: some Arizona Highways scenery, some well-weathered faces, a few artifacts of folk religion. It reflects rather badly on the entire project that the vividest characters to emerge are the Anglo interlopers

Robert Redford directed this sweet and mystical but not sappy story of a Mexican-American farming community struggling to keep corporate interests (including Christopher Walken in a more complex twist on his standard villain) from diverting all of their water.