The Horsemen

The Horsemen (1971)

Runtime: 106 minutes

Directed by: John Frankenheimer

Starring: Omar Sharif, Srinada Le, Leigh Taylor-Young, Jack Palance, Peter Jeffrey

From: Columbia

Why did no one tell me there was a John Frankenheimer movie written by Dalton Trumbo & starring Omar Sharif which is about buzkashi-as it's known in Afghanistan-and was filmed there?

Even outside of Rambo 3, I have been familiar for a long while with the Central Asian sport of buzkashi, practiced for thousands of years is also known as ulak tartysh or kupkari in such countries as Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. What makes it bizarre is that the object carried around on horseback is either the carcass of a goat or a calf. As this movie also features camel wrestling (until last night, a popular sport in the region I had zero knowledge of) along with birds and rams fighting with each other and horses falling down during a game & not always getting back up... some people reading this will cross the movie off the list after hearing that. Anyhow, a few weeks ago I was down a rabbit hole and was quite surprised at the existence of a Hollywood movie concerning buzkashi and with the talent involved.

As it is that time period, plenty of people in the movie are Middle Eastern of some sort (including Sharif) yet many of the main players are rather white. I mean, Sharif's dad is “noted Arab-American actor” Jack Palance and Leigh Taylor-Young plays a prostitute who becomes integral to the plot. While the movie does have exciting action and the little buzkashi you see was brought to life nicely, a big problem is that the lead character is a jerk who gets hurt during a big game and in what was presumably a redemption story, acts like a heel and a fool whose bullheaded actions are proven to be dumb and he treats other like dirt... I am supposed to root for this guy, right? To be honest, this did not happen with me.


Seeing more of the sport would have been nice; the viewer has to figure out how the game is played, although that wasn't too difficult. It is a weird exotic thing where apparently riders whipping each other more than their horses is commonplace... discovering the intricacies of the game would have been more pleasant than following around a stubborn ass who constantly insults his servant and drags him along into needlessly dangerous situations. Admittedly, the scenery-either Afghanistan or Spain-is lovely and there is some nice acting, especially in a long scene involving Sharif and Palance; be that as it may, it isn't too much a surprise to me why this is obscure to most and the way I saw this was via “less than ethical” means.