ariakos

Return of Sabata casts Lee Van Cleef back as the cunning and ruthless sharpshooter, Sabata. Similarities between the first Sabata movie where Van Cleef also played the same role are more than abundant: acrobats, comical sidekicks, greedy villains, double-crossing allies, Sabata shooting off with his cool 4-barreled Derringer and so forth. Lee Van Cleef rocks. He's as cool as ever, and all the other actors do at least fairly decent jobs supporting him.

Everything seems to be as well as in the first movie. Except that this time the plot is more complicated and filled with twists and turns (and plot holes). Unfortunately this is not entirely good thing: in time you lose track of the plot twists and begin to wonder the motives and the logic behind some of the characters behavior. Why did he do that? Wouldn't it been more logical to behave or act some other way? Much like Ocean's 12 or any other snotty "cleverer-than-thou" sequel, Return of Sabata drowns you with twists and turns just for the sake of confusing. This leads to the point that you actually have to watch Return of Sabata at least couple of times before the main plot fully unravels. Of course you do get the big picture in the end of the movie after the first watch, but in order to get all the nuances and small details in place you might want to give it another go. Not that the main plot would magically turn out to be any better: it just rewards you a little bit more since the second time you have a small grasp *why* somebody did something that seemed illogical or strange before. This time you know what's in that characters mind and you also know something about his motives. Then again, I strongly believe that these kind of character traits should have been portrayed clearer in the script (or acting) so you would have realized them during the first view time already.

In short? Return of Sabata offers great characters, but lousy and confusing plot. Still, it's worth a watch. Or two.

First Crimson Rivers was a great movie. A bit like French vision of David Fincher's Seven. This sequel, though, does not deliver as well. It lacks the depth, atmosphere and character development of the first Crimson Rivers. The plot in this sequel is quite silly: monks, apocalypse and Nazis... quite original. Not.

Christopher Lee was awesome, but in my opinion he would have deserved more screen time. Now his motivations and character personality were left way too vague. Jean Reno is always a pleasure to see on screen, but this time he gave a routine-like performance. I wonder if he realized this was to be a below-average suspense flick and nothing more? I bet he did. Benoit Magimel was a new face to me, and I think he did quite well. Although his character Reda was practically exactly same kind of young tough cop as Cassel's Kerkerian on the first Crimson Rivers.

This sequel offers nothing new or interesting compared to it's predecessor. It's still passable fun for a one time rent, though.