The Frisco Kid is a 1979 movie directed by Robert Aldrich. The movie is a Western comedy featuring Gene Wilder as Avram Belinski, a Polish rabbi who is traveling to San Francisco, and Harrison Ford as a bank robber who befriends him.
Plot
Rabbi Avram Belinski arrives in Philadelphia from Poland en route to San Francisco where he will be a congregation's new rabbi. He has with him a Torah scroll for the San Francisco synagogue. Avram, an innocent, trusting and inexperienced traveler, falls in with three con men who trick him into helping pay for a wagon and supplies to go west, then leave him and most of his belongings scattered along a deserted road.
Avram is determined to make it to San Francisco. He fends for himself on foot for a while, spends a little time with some Pennsylvania Dutch (whom he takes for Jews at first), and manages to find work on the railroad. While trying to spear fish in a stream (to no avail), he is befriended and fed by a stranger on horseback named Tommy Lillard (Ford). They travel together, make it through the snowy mountains, experience Native American customs and hospitality, and learn a little about each other's culture.
Unfortunately, it turns out Tommy is a bank robber by profession, not only problematic for Avram from a moral point of view, but problematic for Tommy when he robs a bank on a Friday, then finds that Avram (an orthodox Jew) does not ride on the Sabbath—even with a posse on his tail. They remain together somehow, meet and defeat the villains who originally robbed and beat Avram in Philadelphia, and arrive in San Francisco. Avram then must deal with the changes his journey has wrought in his faith and his purpose in life.
Cast
miscellaneous information
- According to Gene Wilder's autobiography, the Tommy role, played by Harrison Ford, was originally planned for John Wayne.
- The scene in the bar got Harrison Ford the Indiana Jones role.[citation needed]
External links
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