And Starring Pancho Villa as Himself

And Starring Pancho Villa as Himself (2003) is an HBO feature you can watch online on iFILM. Antonio Banderas plays the Mexican rebel who, in the winter of 1914, sold Hollywood the rights to his own revolution so he could buy rifles and ammunition.

Producer D.W. Griffith dispatches a young filmmaker, Frank Thayer (Eion Bailey), to sign the deal and shoot a silent picture of Villa's real battles against the federal army. What follows tips into farce: the camera starts dictating when to charge, the general reshoots his own victories for a better take, and the line between staging a war and fighting one dissolves. Thayer's crew ends up caught in literal crossfire. The supporting cast includes Alan Arkin, Jim Broadbent, Kyle Chandler and Alexa Davalos.

Director Bruce Beresford, of Driving Miss Daisy, didn't make a straight biopic but a sharp parable about cinema rewriting history and turning a living man into a marketable legend. It's a good watch for anyone curious about early Hollywood's machinery, and for Banderas in something other than an action role. Watch And Starring Pancho Villa as Himself (2003) online on iFILM.