SenjoorMutt 'Cockfighter' didn't get much love upon it's release and it hasn't gathered it till today probably because it is not an easy watch, mainly because the back story is about cockfights (like the title assumes), and they are pretty gruesome scenes (especially if animal cruelty is something you can't tolerate, and especially if you are very fond of cocks). Though 'Cockfighter' is about cockfights, its main focus is on Frank Mansfield (Warren Oates in one of his best roles), and his struggles to get back into the top game and mainly his inner conflicts - he loves and as it seems, he hates the bloody sport. But winning again is getting his pride back. Warren Oates manages to show so much and create such a deep and disturbed character mainly with silence (Frank Mansfield decided to stop talking after his big mouth got him into big troubles). It's amazing how much sympathy a character dealing with such a vile entertainment can grow. Superb performance by Oates, supported by great cast, Monte Hellman's subtle direction mixed with Charles Willeford's sharp script and minimalistic, but effective cinematography, 'Cockfighter' is heartbreaking, heartwarming and disgusting at the same time.

MisterWhiplash Warren Oates gives one of the most curious performances of the American cinema of the 1970s, not just of his career, with Cockfighter. He plays Frank, a man who doesn't speak (he chooses not to following a bad bet made by bragging) and spends his life taking his prized roosters off to fight in battles as bloody and vicious as anything in a gladiator ring. He also has a love interest, but not much time for that even though, yes, she does love him and he may indeed love her. He's always on the move for the next fight, and when he loses, sometimes by boasting and getting drunk, he just gets right back up with his expression of "well, let's just do this" see-sawing between true determination and respectable glee.There's not many movies that feature cockfighting, and perhaps there is good reason: it is, in fact, illegal in nearly all (if not just all) of the US, it would be difficult to put on today without, of course, animal control people on the set. This is a good thing, if only for the sanity of a cast and crew that would have to watch countless chickens get killed. But the goal of Monte Hellman's film is to take an eye on this hick-centric environment, with people cast who likely had never been in a movie but, more than likely, handled their share of chickens in their lifetimes. It's moody, but it never calls attention to itself. Hellman only gets really "stylish" in the cockfighting scenes, where, as if a precursor to Scorsese's Raging Bull, we see it shot in furious, machine-gun-fire montage, with close-ups of the C-words in mid-air and pecking furiously with wings flapping about. There's even some slow-motion in one of the scenes where Frank's bird loses.It comes about as close as could be ever allowed for visual poetry with these fighting fowl, and this is to Hellman's credit. But the director is also taking a relaxed-yet-concentrated form in following Warren Oates. This is a character who is sure of what he wants, though isn't always the best judge of character or knowing in the right way to do it. He'll take a bet wherever it might lay, and he can take a fight himself, like with the angry boy in the barn, or can hold his own up against a sly but mean dude played by Harry Dean Stanton. Oates plays all of this with the same ease and unlikely charm and, paradoxically, haunting demeanor that one also saw in 1974's Alfredo Garcia. It's amazing to see a case where a script provides a character who doesn't speak precisely because he doesn't have to (at one point he writes something on a notepad for his partner-in-cockfighting, but it's for something crucial).And lest this not be a super-serious film about Cockfighting- as the episode of Seinfeld proved with Kramer's "Little Jerry Seinfeld" rooster, there needs to be some reflection and satire- a few scenes are very funny. Chief among them is a scene where some of the cockfighters are in a hotel room, only to be the victims of a hold-up by men masked with Presidents faces. There's a big laugh once they all leave- by the men who were held up- until the men come back to take a wad of bills one of the men held up after they left. Who does that? Only in a Hellman film, I suppose.

frankenbenz The Roger Corman produced, Monte Hellman directed Cockfighter is a film -if made today- that would be sure to enrage PETA and the SPCA. In other words: animals were harmed and killed in the making of this film. Like it or hate it, the fight scenes within Cockfighter are the best part about it: they are grim, visceral, cruel and exciting. Bloody cock fights aside, the story is the age old sports film formula where the protagonist loses it all before he learns something about himself as he rebuilds from within to become the best. While things may play out as you'd expect, the gritty and realistic Cockfighter shares little in common with The Karate Kid, aside from a formula.There is no denying Cockfighter is an exploitation film. It wants to shock, it wants to entertain and it wants to do so in as fast and cheap a way as possible. It is vintage Roger Corman. If Hellman wasn't behind the lens I'd be OK with Cockfighter being a mere exploitation film, but because he is I expected more. Despite being steeped in real world Cockfighting circles, real fights and convincing locations / background talent, Cockfighter fails to elevate itself above being mere pulp entertainment. If you like grindhouse cinema, which is notoriously underwritten and over acted, then Cockfighter might possibly be the Citizen Kane of this garbage heap. But unless you're trying to convince the world that grindhouse is an important and relevant film movement, then you'll see Cockfighter for what it really is: a mediocre film that squanders the talents of Warren Oates, Harry Dean Stanton and most notably, Monte Hellman.http://eattheblinds.blogspot.com/

Ham_and_Egger It's really about much more than cockfighting, but it does have an authentic, quasi-documentary feel to it. If I'm not mistaken those are actual chickens actually killing each other, which is an almost mind-bending concept in 2005 film-making. PETA and the ASPCA must really gnash their teeth over this movie.The script is terse, due mostly to the fact that Frank Mansfield (Warren Oates) has taken a vow of silence until he wins the 'Cockfighter of the Year' medal handed out by some caricature of a southern Senator. But the story flows, would you really expect any Roger Corman-produced movie to get too bogged down, and largely because you're never more than twenty minutes away from another bloody cockfight.Warren Oates is really feeling his... (no, I won't do that to you). He plays a guy totally driven by cockfighting, something that I find sort of brutal and more than a little boring, but his skill as an actor and the authenticity he brought to the role really drew me in. None of the other actors are really given a chance to make an impression.Ultimately I only watched 'Cockfighter' to see where it fits into the Rednexploitation genre, movies such as 'Moonrunners' or 'Walking Tall.' I'd say it's near the top of that heap and it's moderately enjoyable as a slice of life and for Oates' acting, but really if cockfights are one of those traditional forms of entertainment replaced by the Gameboy then I'm not so sure it was a bad trade.