GurlyIamBeach Instant Favorite.

Tedfoldol everything you have heard about this movie is true.

Phillipa Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

Billy Ollie Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

SnoopyStyle Milagro is a small dusty community. Ladd Devine is the land baron planning to build a golf course resort. Mayor Sammy Cantu and Sheriff Bernabe Montoya enforce a water restriction against the farmers. In frustration, José Mondragon starts irrigating his field to grow beans. Local activist Ruby Archuleta recruits progressive cynical reporter Charlie Bloom to write about the conflict. Herbie Platt is from NYU doing sociology research. Joe offers his place in exchange for work. Fixer Kyril Montana comes in to stop Joe without having to arrest him which could cause political troubles.Director Robert Redford tries to deliver something serious with whimsy. The problem is that the whimsy isn't whimsy enough and the serious is undercut by the lighter tone. The two sides don't mix with ease. José is too angry to root for completely. It would be great to have a more appealing lead like an old quiet farmer. The old man who talks to the invisible spirit would be a great option. That's also another problem. There are too many main characters. Some of them need to be combined. It's still an interesting watch but it does have some problems.

thinker1691 Robert Redford has accomplished much in his lifetime. To his credit is a long list of proud achievements, such as Movie Star, Producer, director, he can now add social activist. Take this film for instance, it's called " The Milagro Beanfield War. " It arises from the John Nichols's novel and involves a small rural town in New Mexico. Having read the novel, I was much taken by the fact, it nearly mirrors the book throughly. The book itself tells the story of how a little New Mexican village is haunted by the spirit of an aging former resident with hopes of revitalizing it's inhabitants into saving their town. The Old man begins by influencing a dispirited farmer named Joe Mondragon (Chick Vennera) to take advantage of an accidental flooding of his family's bean field by a water control system belonging to a rich land developer. The town Sheriff, Bernabe Montoya (Ruben Blades), learns as do all the town's residents of the illegal irrigation, but are curious as to see what Ladd Devine (Richard Bradford) the powerful land baron will do in response. What follows is a escalating collection of serious missteps, comical responses and official repercussions. All in all the cast which includes John Heard, Daniel Stern and Christopher Walker do well to lift this incredible film effort to the shelf of notable Classics. In point of fact, Mr. Redford can add this entertaining movie to his monumental collection of social achievements . Well done! ****

Pat Wolf This movie was very powerful in the sense that it showed how much as Americans we value real estate. The Devine plan for Milagro was to put up a resort, a lake, and a golf course; and by doing so it had no regards for the native population of Milagro. They had been there for hundreds of years, but the town had changed during that time. In the past years, poverty had become noticeable in their personalities. It had always been their style of life, but now it dictated how people acted. This is a classic example of rich people wanting to buy up all the land, so they offer money to all the land owners to buy them out. As far as who held the key to the plot of the story, it was Sheriff Montoya. Although he was dealing with Ladd Devine, he ended up staying true to his native people by defending them. Twice, he stepped in during life/death situations and prevented total chaos from breaking out. Also, as far as playing their role very well, Christopher Walken did a great job playing Kryil Montana, the loose cannon, stop at nothing, wild-west vigilante out to get Mondragon. It was interesting to see how much pride Montana took in finally arresting Mondragon, but how he still had a level of respect for him when he let him go. Ruby Archuleta was the activist who made this all happen. She took a stand to defend her native people, even when at times, they didn't understand what was happening to them. She got the injustice into the hands of the right man, Charlie Bloom, an ex-lawyer and civil rights activist. He stood up for the town that wasn't even his own and printed the news about everything that was going on. It was interesting to see that some people in the town were willing to let the development happen. The US Forest Service rangers, whose families had been in Milagro all their life, were willing to turn their backs on their people and got paid off by Devine. This created most of the conflict in the movie because the first scene in which people actually pointed their guns at each other involved the rangers. They had taken Joe's cow onto national land, so they could detain it, therefore costing him $100 to retrieve it. Well everyone knew that this was by design, and the old men in Milagro were there to defend Joe all the way. Luckily Sheriff Montoya stepped in, or we would be looking at a whole different plot line. The other incident which made the movie into what it was involved Montana buying up all of Bloom's local papers and trying to burn them. But while this was going on, a gust of wind picked up all the newspapers and spread them all over town for everyone to read. As far as social justice movies go, this would go somewhere at the top of the list. It was a little different than I would have expected, in that I expected Devine to just buy Mondragon out of his property. All Joe was looking for was a decent job to pay off his bills and feed his family, so if Devine was willing to just offer Mondragon a lucrative settlement, then this wouldn't have happened. The only thing that would have made this movie better would to have been to see Bloom go to court as a civil attorney and make the whole state of New Mexico aware of the injustices that were occurring.

classicsoncall I think I'll file this one under 'best movies no one ever heard of', oddly enough right next to "Nobody's Fool", which stars Robert Redford's buddy Paul Newman. Redford does a great job here of mixing together unknowns with a name supporting cast to tell a compelling spiritual tale that leaves you feeling good at the end. Fortunately, the film doesn't need a prayer to St. Jude, the patron saint of desperate causes.It's wonderful to see how Joe Mondragon's (Chick Vennera) accidental swipe at a sluice gate shakes up a town and makes his father's bean field a community event. Together with some of the Dancing Angel's divine intervention to spread the word in Charlie Bloom's (John Heard) newspaper, the town of Milagro rises up to oppose the area's development by greedy corporate fat cats. You know it's only a matter of time before the locals win out, but the fun is in seeing how they get there.Interestingly, the film's 'star' talent doesn't seem to get in the way of the story; Christopher Walken, Daniel Stern, John Heard, and Melanie Griffith all blend into their characters without stepping on the toes of the Milagro cast. Along the way, each of their portrayals learn something of themselves and the power of the human spirit. But the one to really keep an eye on is the town patriarch Amarante (Carlos Riquelme), who combines the wisdom of the angels with the temerity to buy his bullets with food stamps. One gets the impression that he might be the next angel in training, almost certainly so as the movie comes to a close."The Milagro Beanfield War" is certainly deserving of a wider audience. Kudos to Robert Redford for an inspiring piece of work that steps outside the boundaries of traditional Hollywood fare.