<!-- m --><a href="http://www.veoh.com/watch/v18767819AX25q4Ez?h1=Cockfighter+%281974%2C+Monte+Hellman%29" target="_blank">http://www.veoh.com/watch/v18767819AX25q ... llman%29</a><!-- m -->

I came to Cockfighter because I think Charles Willeford is an interesting crime writer, and not only did he adapt his 1962 book into a screenplay here, but he plays one of the characters. But my problem was always going to be a dread that the action would show a lot of animal suffering. It's hard to fake those cockfights, especially with 1974 means and Roger Corman money, and the film takes on a procedural, almost documentary feel in those sequences. They MOSTLY get away with it by using close-ups and editing, where puppetry might be used, but some of this stuff is real and I, personally, don't like to see it. That said, I also think the story has to lose something in translation, a contraction of a novel reportedly based on The Odyssey, but it's hard to see it even when you know. It just seems to meander from fighting ring to fighting ring, with Warren Oates obsessive in a gambling addict kind of way, and thinking his way of life has value, when his writer largely thinks it doesn't. And that's the best part of this. Sticking with it to the end (and its very ugly moment) reveals an inversion of this kind of narrative I find particularly good, when the Penelope to Oates' Ulysses finally shows up to see a fight.