AllMovie

One of several biographical films that dramatize the life of Mexican hero and revolutionary Pancho Villa, this version by director Ismael Rodriguez is a standard recounting of the Mexican peasant's exploits from a favorable light. Villa (Pedro Armendariz) was born in 1878 to sharecroppers on a ranch in northern Mexico. When he was sixteen, he had to escape the ranch for his life because he shot the owner, Sr. Lopez-Negrete in the foot for an act of aggression against his family. After several captures and escapes, Villa (who by then had changed his name from Doroteo Arango) eventually heads into the life of an outlaw. Even when he attempts to go straight, he is caught out by the lawmen looking for him and heads back into the mountains. By 1909, he had joined the Mexican Revolutionary forces and was in charge of the Division of the North. Rising high in position for a short while, his life was always threatened. He was assassinated in 1923.