Synopsis
Rabbi Avram arrives in Philadelphia from Poland en route to San Francisco where he will be a congregation's new rabbi. An innocent and inexperienced traveller, he is tricked by con men to pay for the trip to go west, then they leave him and his belongings scattered along a deserted road. He is befriended by a stranger, Tommy, who is a bank robber and have many adventures during their journey.
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Cast
- Gene WilderAvram
- Harrison FordTommy
- Ramon BieriMr. Jones
- Val BisoglioChief Gray Cloud
- George DiCenzoDarryl Diggs
- Leo FuchsChief Rabbi
- Penny PeyserRosalie
- William SmithMatt Diggs
- Jack SomackSamuel Bender
- Beege BarketteSarah Mindl
Recommendations
- 60
Variety
Director Robert Aldrich has always adroitly mixed comedic and dramatic aspects in his films, and Frisco Kid is no exception. For audiences expecting Mel Brooks belly-laughs amidst the Yiddishisms, however, there’s bound to be disappointment. - 50
Chicago Sun-Times
The Frisco Kid has a certain softness at its center. The Wilder character has a sweetness, a niceness, that's interesting for the character but doesn't seem to work with this material. It's really nobody's movie. The screenplay has been around Hollywood for several years, and Aldrich seems to have taken it on as a routine assignment. - 50
Newsweek
Wilder is best at outrageous moments, teaching an impromptu hora to the Indians or babbling Yiddish to some Amish farmers he mistakes for rabbis. He is, in fact, an actor of moments, less likely to wear him when surrounded by the funny ensembles Brooks used to give him. Aldrich is not Brooks, but he has, in the past, made fine action films in which the male camaraderie was eloquently implicit. Somewhere along the way, he picked up a sledgehammer. [16 July 1979, p.93] - 40
The New York Times
There's no shortage of talent in The Frisco Kid, but it's the wrong talent for the wrong material. - 38
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
The Frisco Kid, billed as a comedy, is about a gentle Polish rabbi of 1850 who is instructed to cross America and become spiritual leader of an eagerly awaiting congregation in San Francisco. But the movie is propelled more by violence - in action, in dialogue and in editing - than by humor. No wonder there are so few good kosher westerns. [24 July 1979] - 25
Washington Post
The finished film obliterates whatever promise of novelty and human interested existed in the basic idea of Belinski's culture shock. If the rabbi's odyssey was embryonically appealing, the filmmakers have nurtured it along pact from an elephant trying to hatch a robbin's egg. [27 July 1979, p.B1]
