The Frisco Kid

The Frisco Kid is a 1979 American Western comedy film directed by Robert Aldrich, starring 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, newly graduated at the bottom of his class from a Polish yeshiva, arrives in Philadelphia 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. Belinski, an innocent, trusting, and inexperienced traveler, falls in with three con men, the brothers Matt and Darryl Diggs and their partner Mr. Jones, who trick him into helping pay for a wagon and supplies to go west, then brutally rob him and leave him and most of his belongings scattered along a deserted road in Pennsylvania. Still determined to make it to San Francisco, Belinski, on foot and exhausted, comes upon a colony of Amish people. From their simple black clothing he jumps to the conclusion that they are "Landsmen", fellow Chasidic Jews, until he notices the Bible carried in the pocket of one of the men, at which point he faints dead away. The local people are not fazed. They take care of Belinski and collect enough money from their congregation to provide him a ticket on the westbound train. When he reaches the end of the line in Ohio, the rabbi manages to find work on the railroad until he saves up enough money to buy a horse and some supplies. On his way west again, he is befriended and looked after by a stranger named Tommy Lillard, a bank robber with a soft heart who is moved by Belinski's helplessness and frank personality, despite the trouble it occasionally gives him. For instance, when Lillard robs a bank on a Thursday, he finds that Belinski (an Orthodox Jew) will not ride on the Shabbat even with a hanging posse on his trail. They still manage to get away, because the horses are rested from having been walked for a full day. They are fresh and able to ride all night, outdistancing their pursuers. The two also experience American Indian customs and hospitality, disrupt a Trappist monastery's vow of silence with an innocent gesture of gratitude, and learn a little about each other's culture.