Kobi,
Fitch tested Max BEFORE Cord called out Max's name. Fitch may have been satisfied with Max passing those tests, but he had to have again been very suspicious after Cord did that. I am not sure I would call it a plot hole, because with all the goings on getting ready for the heist he was distracted. But it did really press the line of what is acceptably plausible.
A very differnt sort of problem I had was with Pilar's reaction to Max's killing Bowdre. We don't know much of her backstory as far as her attitudes are concerned other than her asking him initially if he was in prison for killing someone, and he said no (which was technically true). At first though I took this to mean merely that she was going to trust him more, be less concerned about her personal safety, if he was not a murderer.
But on the ohter hand I think it fair to say, despite the arguments later presented by the padre, that a revenge killing is hardly on an equivalent moral, meaning immoral, level as an outright murder.
Then there was the angle that having been bitten by the snake, the poison no doubht was in fact affecting her thinking.
It may have even been intentional which at the time would have made for a frankly revisionist western sort of approach to the unfolding parable, but this all came across as making her rejection of Max rather ambiguous in terms of where Pilar was coming from. This in turn imo made assessing Max's own moral standing ambiguous. Perhaps intentionally so? I do in fact think the film should be understood as showing Max as, just as Cord had warned, becoming more like the men he was hunting as the hunt changed him.
But when he killed the first murderer, there was no real expression of remorse, and the wife even lauded him for doing that. The Indians also seemed to approve what he did. So what changed when it was the second one in Bowdre?
Pilar herself briefly raised that it was that Max had misled her, but imo only in the sense he did not tell her who Bowdre was and what he intended to do. On the other hand I do think Max wanted to save Pilar, and perhaps even had some general intention to stay with her when all was said and done. Nothing was said or done that indicated he was literally only using her, as she said.
All rather confusing. I gave the film a 7, which is not bad. Could have been better though.
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