Deadlock

In the immensity of the desert, three men dispute a suitcase full of money.

A German western spaghetti, in the form of homage to one of the greatest classics in cinema (The Good, The Bad and The Ugly).

It lacks the mystique and mood of the film that inspires it, but doesn't become a cheap copy, has its own personality and that's good.

It's interesting for fans of the genre, and can even be considered superior to some american westerns, when we talk about the score and the way it plays an important role in the story itself.

The cinematography is also pretty good, to be honest.

It's dark, with a lack of joy or hope, showing that excessive ambition and selfishness lead the human being to commit the most perverse acts.

(1970( Deadlock DUBBED PSYCHOLOGICAL THRILLER

Produced, written and directed by Roland Klick that has a man nicknamed as Kid (Marquard Bohm) attempting to cross through the desert with briefcase. And by the time he plops to the sandy desert. He is then discovered by a driver, Charles Dump (Mario Adorf) who at first was thinking about killing him but in some weird circumstance, he ends up saving his life by pulling the bullet that was stuck inside his shoulder. He does this by driving to a somewhat deserted small mining town who lives with a crazy girl, Jesse (Mascha Rabben) he sometimes calls her as his daughter and an crazy overweight lady, Corina (Betty Segal). And the Kid warns Charles about a guy expected to show up, his nickname is Sunshine (Anthony Dawson) as the somewhat deserted mining area was supposed to be their meeting place.

The movie was supposed to be in German but is dubbed into English and called "Deadlock" and by watching it, it is reminiscent to better movies made before it from "Treasure of the Sierra Madre" and Point Blank and others.

Some of the existing problems with this is the fact that both Charles Dump and the Kid had opportunities to take advantage of the situations and both did not! Such as Charles Dump had the opportunity to just continue on driving as well as ignore the Kid at the opening and he did not. The Kid had the opportunity to have a gun battle with Sunshine and he did not. All this is asinine if you ask me.

Better than it has any right to be.

It's an odd film, is 'Deadlock'. It drags its heels pretty much from start-to-finish and can feel aimless at times, though to be fair it certainly does live up to its title. The performances from Mario Adorf, Anthony Dawson and Marquard Bohm are solid and are the main reason as to why I'm rating this as I am. The whole thing looks neat for 1970, too.

I can kinda see why others like this more than I do, but for me it falls short to what it was seemingly attempting to do. Location is cool, cover (not the current IMDb one) is ace, (much praised?) soundtrack is meh. Still, I'd class it as 'good' - albeit marginally so.

The movie is so slow paced that you may not like how it evolves. It also only has a few characters and a very contained location setting. But if you buy into it and do not mind that it tends to get violent, tends to have weird characters to say the least and sounds like it has been dubbed (the english allegedly original audio) - then you will have a movie that will have your attention from start to finish.

I really dug the weirdness of it, the setting, the character quirks and how it went on with the intertacting and backstabbing. Certain things are quite predictable - which may be because I've seen quite a few movies and because they rely on cliches too. Still a low budget sort of western, that might be able to tickle you in all the right places. Be aware of what this is and how its pace is and mood are ... and decide for yourself

"Deadlock" came as something of a surprise as I only bothered to hunt down a copy because of the inclusion of Can on the soundtrack. While Can's contributions are quite notable -- their music works perfectly with the stark imagery -- the film itself holds up quite well on its own. Shot almost entirely in the desert, the filmmakers make use of the threadbare environment and utilize it to heighten the sense of isolation and persecution which propel the characters of the film. Slightly overlong at 92 minutes, "Deadlock" is nevertheless well worth investigating.