Le Spécialiste

With his deservedly lauded, darkly hued outlaw masterpiece 'The Specialists' Sergio Corbucci once again dynamically proves himself the grand architect of audaciously stylised, dazzlingly quick-fire, bullet-blasting western action! A bona fide, flint-edged classic, dramatically fortified with an exemplary cast of charismatic Euro-cult legends, truly breathtaking vistas, an exemplary score by Angelo Francesco Lavagnino, pristine photography by maestro Dario Di Palma, and a seethingly enigmatic performance by broody, blisteringly bellicose blue-eyed Gallic icon Johnny Hallyday as the loner, fatally fast Gunslinger Hud Dixon!

There's a fatalistic, palpably grim, strikingly Noirish quality to Corbucci's art that I found especially fascinating, with its majestically mountainous, soul-stirring vistas, lasso-tight plot, exemplary set pieces, and generously seratonin-spiking climax, the undeniably special 'Gli Specialisti' is a very, VERY fine western indeed! On a more personal note, not only did I find Hallyday's steely portrayal of the stern, solitudinous shootist Hud suitably menacing, it also proved to be pleasingly nuenced, engendering great sympathy for his isolated, doom-laden vengeance, a rare trait one doesn't often find in the more noisome, gun-happy spaghetti western protagonists of its era.

This Western is a superior outing because displaying thrills , shoot'em up , brawls , intrigue , riding pursuits and many other things . It stands out as one of the best late series genre Spaghetti Western . It deals with a gunslinger called Hud (French singer Johnny Hallyday) returns to Blackstone to find out why his brother was lynched . Meanwhile , Hud is relentlessly pursued by a sheriff (Gastone Moschin) and some henchmen (Sergio Marquand and Riccardo Pizzuti , regular in Terence Hill-Spencer movies) but he gets rid of his contenders . Later on , he along with the marshal are imprisoned by ¨El Diablo¨ (Mario Adorf) , and subsequently doublé-crossed by the beautiful bank owner (Françoise Fabian , who played in ¨Belle De Jour¨) . At the end takes place a curious duel between hippie outlaws battling Hallyday (including all the villagers naked similarly to many years later ¨The perfume¨) .

It's a thrilling western with breathtaking gunfight carried out by protagonist Johnny Hallyday who steals the show as a merciless revenger , executing thespian skills , bounds and leaps , twists and shooting and throughly enjoys himself ; as he faces off the heartless Mario Adorf and his hoodlums . It's an entertaining story with a touch of peculiarity , some great characters , an amazing music score and a lot of fun to watch . The picture also titled ¨ Gli Specialisti" is a tale of justice and revenge , as a man returns to a little town and looks for vengeance . The innovative as well as depressing script , which was co-written by Corbucci, and showed him edging close to the new type of offbeat Westerns he is best known for . The basic plot is typical spaghetti western fare , but what makes this movie stand out is its style . While 'A Fistful of Dollars' may have sparked the international popularity of the Spaghetti Western , this semi-successful movie follows its wake , including a lone hero , but here he has to confront strange characters as a weird Mexican outlaw and including four hippies . Johnny Hallyday is top-notch , he ravages the screen , shoots , hits , runs and kills . Here our hero moving through cold rather then heat and fighting in hills and mountains rather then sweat and dust . Support cast is pretty good , and the honor acting goes to the fantastic performance by the always great Mario Adorf as the slimy , menacing outlaw make up for , here in his ordinary role as bandit and in a cruelly baddie character , he is terrific , and bears a hysterical and mocking aspect , subsequently he would play similar characters . Besides , it appears as secondaries the habitual in Italian Western such as : Serge Marquand , Remo De Angelis , Riccardo Pizzuti and Gino Pernice . The good musician Angelo Francesco Lavagnino composes a charming Spaghetti soundtrack , well conducted and it's full of enjoyable sounds . Adequate cinematography by Dario De Palma who makes great use of mountain locations and desolate snowy outdoors , it fact , was filmed in northern Italy in the snow-covered area of Cortina d'Ampezzo , Belluno, Veneto similarly to ¨The great silence¨.

This motion picture , titled "Specialists" or ¨The Specialist¨ , was compellingly directed by Sergio Corbucci , it was well received by critics and public . Corbucci was a Western expert , as he made "Massacre at Canyon Grande" , starring James Mitchum , George Ardisson , his first Spaghetti Western to be distributed in the US under the director's own name and being co-directed by Albert Band . Corbucci's next film in the genre was ¨Minnesota Clay¨ (1964) performed by Cameron Mitchell . It was a moderate success , but Corbucci's next Spaghetti Western would break box-office records worldwide and brand his name in Western history alongside Sergio Leone , the ultra-violent masterpiece ¨Corbucci's Django¨ (1966) , considered by some reviewers as an "anti-Western" , it brought an entirely new level of stylization to the genre , not only signaled a move toward an even grittier and more nihilistic brand of Western , but it established a lasting relationship between Corbucci and Franco Nero . After the success of "Django" , Corbucci embarked on a trail of directing more Western films and quickly became one of the more prolific filmmakers in the genre . His subsequent Spaghetti Westerns , were ¨Johnny Gold¨ (1966) with Mark Damon , ¨Hellbenders¨ (1967) with Joseph Cotten and ¨Navajo Joe¨ (1966) with Burt Reynolds , all of them were filmed and released in quick succession . His next Western was "The Great Silence", (1968) , a cult movie starred by Jean-Louis Trintignant as a mute gunslinger and Klaus Kinski as a sadistic bounty hunter . His next Western films were ¨The mercenary¨, and ¨Los Compañeros¨ which re-teamed up with Franco Nero again with which would began his semi-genre with what he called the "Zapata-Spaghetti Westerns" married by racial stereotypes , proletarian fables and his political statements became more explicit . By setting the story in Mexico and fleshing out his characters with political awareness , they were his last box-office successes and deemed to be two of the most accomplished Spaghetti Westerns , with a combination of humor , pathos , comic book-style action, and political commentary . During the 1970s Corbucci made three more Westerns , but the popularity of the genre began to die out . As he made "Sonny & Jed" (1972) dealing with a peculiar couple , Tomas Milian-Susan George , in Bonnie and Clyde mold ; ¨What am I doing in the middle of the revolution !¨ (1972) with Vittorio Gassman and the regular Eduardo Fajardo and ¨The White , the Yellow and the Black¨ (1975) , both of them are almost a parody of his Zapata Westerns , and the latter a spoof to ¨Red Sun¨ .

The whole town of Blackstone is afraid, because they lynched Bret Dixon's brother - and he is coming back for revenge! At least that's what they think.

A great Johnny Hallyday and a very interesting, early Mario Adorf star in this Italo-Western, obviously filmed in the Alps.

Bret Dixon is coming back to Blackstone to investigate why his brother was lynched. He is a loner and gunslinger par excellance, everybody is afraid of him - the Mexican bandits (fighting the Gringos that took their land!) as well as the "decent" citizens that lynched Bret's brother. They lynched him, because they thought he stole their money instead of bringing it to Dallas to the safety of the bank there. But this is is only half the truth, as we find out in the course of this psychologically interesting western.

But beware, it's kind of a depressing movie as everybody turns out to be guilty somehow and definitely everybody is bad to the bone...

Still, I enjoyed it very much and gave it an 8/10. Strange, that only less than 5 people voted for this movie as of January 12th 2002....

Cult film-maker Corbucci's rarest of his thirteen Spaghetti Westerns (of which I'm only left with WHAT AM I DOING IN THE MIDDLE OF THE REVOLUTION [1972] to catch) is one I only became aware of fairly recently via Marco Giusti's "Stracult" guide; it's an atypically bleak genre gem in the style of the director's own masterpiece, THE GREAT SILENCE (1968), complete with desolate snowy landscapes.

Johnny Hallyday, the French Elvis Presley, whom I first saw in Jean-Luc Godard's DETECTIVE (1985) is a curious but highly effective choice to play the loner anti-hero Hud (who, like Clint Eastwood's The Man With No Name from Sergio Leone's celebrated "Dollars Trilogy", is fitted with a steel-plate armor for protection); incidentally, I had 'met' Hallyday's stunning daughter Laura Smet at the 2004 Venice Film Festival but was distracted by the presence of her esteemed director, Claude Chabrol! Gastone Moschin is another curious addition to the fold (serving pretty much the same function that Frank Wolff did in THE GREAT SILENCE) but acquits himself well and is amusingly clumsy in the presence of a bathing Francoise Fabian; the latter, then, plays a greedy nymphomaniac of a banker's widow who seduces all and sundry in the pursuit of her goals. Sylvie Fennec has the other major female role as a farm girl looked after by Hallyday and who, at one point, is entreated into Free Love by 'hippie' Apache Gabriella Tavernese (with this is mind, it's worth noting that the movie features surprising but welcome bouts of nudity from both Fabian and Tavernese)! Incidentally, the anachronistic addition of a bunch of long-haired youths (who also engage in dope-smoking and revolutionary talk) is a somewhat half-baked attempt at contemporary relevance – but it all eventually adds to the fun (besides, even the black barmaid sports an Afro hairdo!).

Mario Adorf, too, enjoys himself tremendously with the smallish role of a larger-than-life Mexican bandit nicknamed "El Diablo" – who keeps a youthful biographer constantly by his side (an element which may have influenced Clint Eastwood's UNFORGIVEN [1992]) and, at one point, challenges the captive Moschin to a head-butting duel! Having mentioned this, the film also contains one very unusual 'weapon of death' – as Hallyday disposes of an adversary by kicking the cash-register of the saloon into his face! As always, the enjoyably fake fistfights are accompanied by over-emphatic sound effects; equally typically for the genre, however, the wistful score by Angelo Francesco Lavagnino emerges a most significant asset. Actually, the ambiguous ending is entirely in keeping with the film's generally somber tone – after Fabian's comeuppance at the hands of the locals, the hippies (who had previously idolized Hud) suddenly turn against him when wounded and terrorize the town (forcing everyone on the street and unclothed)…but the unflappable gunman manages to lift himself up to meet their challenge (they, however, scurry away at the prospect of facing him!) and then rides out of town, leaving Fennec behind.

In conclusion, I acquired this via a good-quality Widescreen print in Italian albeit with French credits and the occasional lapse – about one minute of screen-time in all – into the French language (where, apparently, the original soundtrack wasn't available).

The French Elvis, Johnny Hallyday is excellent, physically well-cast and impressive as the recurring main character in hundreds of Italian westerns: the lanky, silent stranger with supernatural shooting skills, and for the most part, not particularly interested in having sex with any of the gorgeous girls that filled the Italian westerns.

"The Stranger" character is more interested in dollars or gold but it's rarely explained in most films what his goal would be once he gets said dollars. The prototype was Clint Eastwood followed by Franco Nero, Terrence Hill, Anthony Steffen, George Hilton, Mark Damon, John Phillip Law, Jean-Louis Trintignant, Giuliano Gemma, Gianni Garko, Chuck Connors, Robert Woods, Charles Bronson, Tony Anthony and other actors. Abstract and surreal, the one-dimensional characters in Italian westerns have nothing in common with the more complex characters in American western films and, especially, TV shows that presented westerners faced with the problems and challenges of daily life. An example of this is the character Connors played in Castellari's Kill Them All and Come Back Alone compared to the single dad Lucas McCain raising a son in The Rifleman, a violent show yet filled with great humanity.

Hallyday gives a measured performance, much cooler than the explosive Law was in Death Rides A Horse, lighting the ever-present cigarillo and protecting a beautiful girl from harassing proto-hippies who enjoy rolling in mud holes while dealing elsewhere with a beautiful lady crime boss. Gli Specialisti also includes Mexican banditos, white townspeople (in Nevada), and a closing massacre that wipes out the town. His casting is as unusual as Trintignant's was in The Great Silence, an actor not associated with westerns like Hilton and Steffen were.

As realized in his The Great Silence, and Django, Corbucci had a great eye for scenic and unusual locations that elevated his films from the many Italian westerns that all shared the same geography. His locations are an important part of his westerns. Gli Specialisti never struck a major chord in audiences and Euro western fans but it's well worth repeated viewings.