Word: rancho
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...desert plots to about 45,000 people for a total of more than $200 million. AMREP's initial investment for the parched land was about $17.8 million. To hype the value of the property, the indictment charges, the company added some showcase improvements in a development called Rio Rancho, which is in fact only a small part of AMREP's 96,000-acre Rio Rancho subdivision. Most of the outlying lots -with no water, sewers or electricity and little chance of ever getting any -are too far away to benefit from the construction of the core community...
...AMREP unload the real estate? A key tactic was to get crowds of potential buyers together for free drinks and dinner at hotel ballrooms and restaurants. There, a smooth-talking speaker would mount the podium to describe various Rio Rancho plots. As he spoke, salesmen at the tables would jump up, shouting "Hold!" as if they had just sold the lot he was talking about. Their enthusiasm would be contagious, and since the land contracts were right there on the tables, guests would impulsively sign on the dotted line. In so doing, they committed themselves to purchases ranging from...
AMREP promotions recited an enticing litany: Albuquerque was expanding in the direction of Rio Rancho; land values in surrounding Sandoval County were rising at an astonishing pace; there was a hyperactive market for resale; AMREP was letting the land go at such low prices because of its "low markup, high-volume policy"; all the lots were part of a "master-planned community"; and utilities were available to anyone who wanted to build. The indictment charges that each of these claims was criminally misleading...
...from middle-class respectability (Jeff Bridges) and his faithful half-breed companion (Sam Waterston), who seems, in his inarticulate way, to aspire to the free life enjoyed by his Indian ancestors. They begin the film as prankish, thoughtless one-cow-at-a-time rustlers. They end it in Rancho Deluxe-a prison camp-after they fail to pull off a major cattle heist. Their nemesis is the biggest, most blustering rancher in Montana (Clifton James); his name is Brown. Their undoing is an ancient range detective (Slim Pickens) who is smart enough to stand still and wait for the miscreants...
...brand-new Lincoln auto is pumped full of slugs from an ancient buffalo rifle. But Perry appears to distrust his taste for surrealism and settles too often for the merely slick. Similarly, McGuane, a highly regarded young novelist, tells us too little about the characters in this original screenplay. Rancho Deluxe might have been a film of considerable originality, something on the order of last year's under rated Thunderbolt and Lightfoot (which also starred Bridges). Instead, all it offers is conventional, well-paced entertainment, which provides an inadequate context for a few sudden shows of genuine strength...