Charles Bronson plays Chino Valdez, a loner who trains wild horses on the outskirts of a small desert town in the 1973 western directed by John Sturges. He's an outcast, shunned as a "half-breed" by the local whites, but becomes a mentor to Jamie (Vincent Van Patten), a runaway teen who rides by looking for work.
Things get complicated when the leathery Chino falls in love with the beautiful English-raised Catherine (Jill Ireland), half-sister of cattle baron Maral (Marcel Bozzuffi), who is trying to drive Chino out. When Chino proposes marriage to Catherine, Maral sets his henchmen to destroy Chino's homestead and herd.
You could call the Italian-Spanish-French co-production a spaghetti western; it was shot in Almeria, Spain, and produced by Italian mogul Dino de Laurentiis with an international cast. But with an American director (veteran western filmmaker Sturges, The Magnificent Seven, Gunfight at the O.K. Corral), and screenwriter (Clair Huffaker, The War Wagon), the resulting film plays more like an American frontier drama than the violent, hard-edged stories of mercenary outlaws usually seen in spaghetti westerns.
While Chino fights back, the film doesn't descend into a bloodbath, and through it all, Jamie gets a first-hand look at bigotry and power in action. There's no real happy ending here and Chino's ultimate actions may seem like capitulation, but it's a realistic response to an impossible situation and there is a dignity to his retreat. The result is satisfying without being compelling, a low-key film that never quite pays off its emotional drama or delivers the violence that Bronson fans come to expect. Which is to say, perfectly fine.
Though rated PG, the film features brief nudity and racial slurs. Originally released in the U.S. under the title The Valdez Horses, it was renamed Chino and is better known to many viewers by that name. The new DVD and Blu-ray editions from Kino feature commentary by film historian Paul Talbot, a short video interview with actor Vincent Van Patten, and alternate opening titles among the supplements. Optional purchase.