MovieChat Forums > The Wrath of God (1972) Discussion > what was Mitchum's real character?

what was Mitchum's real character?


With it being in the 1920s and him toting a tommy gun which was standard gangster hardware at the time, plus there was a truckload of smuggled booze, makes me think he was a gangster either on the run or wanting to move in on the territory and got caught in all the ruckus of what was going on.

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Most likely a bootlegger or even a hitman considering the disguise he wore.

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I do think that at one point in his life, he had actually been a priest. He seemed to have a very strong knowledge of the Catholic Church and its rituals. There was never one clue other than his violent tendencies that he was an imposter, if I remember correctly. I think if he was meant to be in disguise, there would have been a scene where he bluffs his way through a ritual and one of the other characters notices his errors.

I think the character is an extremely violent extension/exaggeration of the "Whiskey Priest" archetype of a corrupted Catholic Priest in a war-torn Latin-American country, as seen in the novels of Graham Greene.

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