VividSimon Simply Perfect

Merolliv I really wanted to like this movie. I feel terribly cynical trashing it, and that's why I'm giving it a middling 5. Actually, I'm giving it a 5 because there were some superb performances.

Mandeep Tyson The acting in this movie is really good.

Raymond Sierra The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

FightingWesterner Joshua (Fred Williamson) tracks the band of cutthroats who shot down his defenseless mother (not a good thing to do to a strong black man) through the desert and into an implicitly racist town where things really heat up.Great location photography makes this low-budget blaxploitation/western look better than it's dollar figure would suggest.This is a minimalist viewing experience where the story (like a silent picture) is told primarily in pictures with most of the sparse dialog inconsequential, which I think explains the mixed reviews.Personally, I thought it was an okay movie but I'd wish that the filmmakers would have beefed up the script with more dramatics and emotions, playing up the racism in the town and forcing Williamson to fight to extract the despicable villains.Also, It would have been nice to see a recognizable character actor (Aldo Ray or Cameron Mitchell anyone? Slim Pickens maybe?) as the heavy.The repetitive score was a minus.

thesiouxfallskid This film I consider a very good example of how a film may elicit a variety of responses. I have learned not to take too seriously the comments by others or I may miss a real gem. Not that I would put this film in the gem category but definitely the good side of in-between. I am amazed to read how some abhorred the music. I recall how the music in Keoma drove some people crazy while others (like me) liked it. In Joshua the music fit the film perfectly, especially the low growl when the camera turned to the black rider. So (as we well understand) people's tastes vary. I went for the acting in this one also. I even liked the bad teeth on those ugly bad guys. Though I prefer an unpredictable story line, this film can be good when one prefers sometime something simple. Credibility got stretched for my taste but the music saved it for me. Not bad. I won't forget this one.

hokeybutt JOSHUA: THE BLACK RIDER (3 outta 5 stars) I am almost tempted to give this movie 5 out of 5 stars because it is almost perfect in its simplicity... a western movie can't get much more straight-forward than this: a man's mother is killed... and he spends the rest of the movie tracking and killing the men who did it. But, really, the acting is kind of poor and the direction is uninspired. There isn't really much dialogue so you can't say the script was well-done. Also, the movie is kind of slow... but personally I don't usually count that as a flaw... I *like* movies that take their time. Fred Williamson plays the title character... the bounty hunter bent on revenge for his mama's demise. The bad guys kidnap a woman along the way and rape her a few times but by the movie's end she has inexplicably allied herself with one of her assailants. Practically the entire soundtrack of this movie is a 90 second piece of faux-spaghetti-western music that gets repeated again and again and again... towards the end of the movie it almost becomes comical when that same old theme is repeated yet again. I think you need to *really* be a fan of westerns to like this one.. otherwise you are probably going to be bored beyond belief.

Scott-166 I really like western films but this one is absolutely insupportable. There's no story here, no acting, no directional touches. The cast is completely lost in a series of scenes that made no sense at all (like the showdown in the cave when Joshua killed the last outlaw). There's no dialogue here, too. Williamson develops a zombie-like performance all the time and that contributes to make this mess a complete waste of time and a great exercise of patience.