Corri uomo corri

Tomas Milian returns as Cuchillo, a petty thief who after being imprisoned helps his cell-mate and himself escape. He then gets entangled in a run to get the 3 million dollars in gold that his cell-mate, whom also happens to be a Mexican Revolutionary, hid in a town across the border in Texas. He's chased by his overbearing girlfriend who wants desperately to get married, a bounty hunter (Donald O'Brien), as well as some others.I have yet to see "The Big Gundown", so I can't compare the two, but I really enjoyed this movie and found it to be humorous well still maintaining some good action. And I certainly liked it much more then the previous Thomas Milian film that I've seen "Se sei Vivo spara" (Django Kill, if you live shoot)

My Grade: B+

Blue Underground DVD Extras: Part of BU's Spaghetti Western Collection. Uncut; 17 minute'Run man Run: 35 years Running' Featurette; 38 minute 'Westerns Italian Style' Featurette; Italian Main Titles; Posters & Still Gallery; Talent Bios for Sergio Sollima & Tomas Milian; Theatrical Trailer

3 Easter Eggs: Highlight the hidden knife in the Extras menu for Trailers for "Django", "Dajango Kill", and "A Man Called Blade"; Highlight the knife in the main menu for Tomas Milian telling of his run with a tax man; The hidden knife over the face in the Chapter Select menu for an unsubtitled interview of some sort

This film reuses the lead character of LA RESA DEI CONTI and is the third of the Sollima/Milian series. Cuchillo (spanish for "knife") is pretty skilled with this weapon and proves its usefulness in a lot of occasions. During the plot he acts as a maverick, with the only help of his fiancé Maria who wants him finally to get married. As a cultural counterpoint there is the other maverick Cassidy who is depicted as Nordic precise and cold. While being competitive at first they later join for purpose. Overall this sequel suffers from an overload of duel and fighting situations which often seem to be completely senseless, e.g. the duel between Cassidy and José in the beginning. The revolution is not more than a background. Less characters and more character development would have helped. Milian plays with his typical humor and very often we see his suffering face in repetitive scenes of torture. . Recommended for fans of the genre and of Milian. Rich daughter Penny (Linda Veras) is working for the salvation army and wears black fish-net stockings which I consider a minor inaccuracy ;-)

The Nicolai/Morricone score is nice but too hammering for my taste, cinematography is well above average. For me this film is the most humorous of the 3 Sollimas.

6/10

(aka: RUN, MAN, RUN)

Decent sequel to Sollima's great spaghetti western, THE BIG GUNDOWN (1966), this one involves the return of Cuchillo (Thomas Milian) who helps revolutionary Santillana (John Ireland in a small role) return $3,000,000 in gold from Texas back to Mexico. Cuchillo also makes a promise to an old revolutionary before he dies to also help return the gold in order to help finance the revolution and overthrow the dictator, Porfirio Diaz.

But Cuchillo also has to deal with former sheriff Cassidy (Donal O'Brien) who also wants the gold for himself. Then there are the French assassins and bounty hunters who also want a share as well as blond Salvation Army turned gold huntress Penny (Linda Vargas) and many other bandits, too numerous to name. As comic relief we have Cuchillio's girlfriend (Chelo Alonso) following Cuchillio across the desert, trying to force him to give up the search for the gold and marry her. Cuchilio's relationship with her can be funny at times.

The nighttime gunbattle in the Texas town with the Mexican bandits is suspenseful as we see Cuchillio go to work on the bandits with his slick knife throwing skills as he kills each bandit, one after the other. It doesn't hurt that Cassidy also helps him since he needs Cuchillio to help him find the gold. The two of them eventually find out that the gold was melted down into the shape of an old printing press and painted black in order to hide it. Now that's an imaginative touch instead of the usual cave or hole in the ground plot device where people want to hide gold.

The ending is roughly the same as in THE BIG GUNDOWN only not as good since Donal O'Brien can't hope to top Lee Van Cleef in the earlier film. In fact, if there's one big flaw about this film, it's that Van Cleef isn't in it. Otherwise I'd rate it a couple of notches higher.

Blue Underground's anamorphic DVD looks pretty good and the sound and dubbing is excellent. As an earlier reviewer mentioned, there is an interview with director Sollima and Milian and their reflections on the film, as well as an interesting 1969 mini-documentary on the making of spaghetti westerns and their (then) popularity in Italy, including behind the scenes looks at this film as well as Sergio Corbucci's THE GRAND SILENCE (1968).

Decent flick although I think there are better.

6 out of 10

Imagine an Italian western inspired by Marx - not Groucho, but KARL. Springing from the loins of the European mini-revolutions of 1968 comes a western with a conscience, courtesy of spaghetti socialist Sergio Sollima, who recycles his most memorable character from the 1967 The Big Gundown and builds an entire film around him.

Cuban-born Tomas Milian returns as Cuchillio, a wily yet endearingly naive opportunist who's quick with a knife but not so quick on the uptake. A quick spell in a border prison sees him share a cell with a seditious poet named Rodriguez, whose dying breath reveals the last resting place of a $3 million cache of revolution-bound gold. And so begins Cuchillio's journey, spreading his proto-revolutionary seed across the Texas border whilst pursued by a sleazy assortment of cutthroats and would-be revolutionaries, spaghetti western regular Donal O'Brien playing a sheriff with a conscience, two French secret agents, his jealous fiancé Dolores (played by the fiery Chelo Alonso), and a blond sergeant in the Salvation Army, a woman who sticks out of her unlikely surroundings like a turd tambourine. Cuchillio himself spends most of his screen time bound, gagged with dynamite, spreadeagled in some godforsaken location, or in one stunning sequence, strapped to the blade of a windmill. And STILL He doesn't lose his sense of humor.

Like The Good The Bad And The Ugly it's a deliberately open-ended epic quest for hidden treasure, but without Leone's grandiose scale and pretentious camera histrionics. It's more like The Wizard of Oz wrapped in a burrito, and peppered with the most random of supporting characters. The usual grimness of these spaghetti westerns is contrasted with Tomas Milian's comic timing, a rousing score by an uncredited Ennio Morricone, and a surprising cameo from veteran American actor John Ireland as a crusty, battle-scarred soldier of the class struggle.

Socialist westerns don't usually come this entertaining - come to think of it, socialists are rarely funny at all! So enjoy the picaresque, picturesque and thankfully undogmatic 1968 Run Man Run.

Sergio Sollima's "Corri, Uomo, Corri" aka. "Run, Man, Run!" of 1968 is a great and very funny sequel to his 1966 masterpiece "La Resa Dei Conti" aka. "The Big Gundown". As Sollimas two other Westerns, this is once again a quite political film, but unlike "The Big Gundown" and "Face To Face", it is so humorous, that it could actually be described as a Spaghetti Western Comedy.

After a dying revolutionary entrusts the hideout of a fortune to him, Mexican petty thief and excellent knife thrower Cuchillo (Tomas Milian, who already played Cuchillo in "The Big Gundown") is chased through the Mexican/Texan borderland by a gang of Mexian bandits, two French mercenaries, who work for the Mexican government, and Nathaniel Cassidy (Donal O'Brien), an American gunslinger who, although primarily interested in money, still has some of his former ideals left. Furthermore Cuchillo is constantly followed by his loving girlfriend Dolores (beautiful Chelo Alonso), who is sexy and passionate, but also very jealous and short-tempered. On his run, Chuchillo first meets, and travels with a pretty blonde Salvation Army activist called Penny (Linda Veras), much to Dolores' disfavor, and later teams up with Cassidy against their mutual enemies.

The acting in this movie is great, especially Tomas Milian (one of my favorite actors) and Donal O'Brien deliver excellent performances as the two main characters. The supporting cast is also very good, the legendary John Ireland has a small role as a the leader of a Mexican revolutionary squad. The cinematography is great, and so is the music by Bruno Nicolai and Ennio Morricone. Many scenes in movie are very memorable, some of them very funny , a Mexican bandit gang leader orders his wife to hold off on giving birth to their child for a few days for example, because he doesn't want his son to be a "Gringo" born in the US, and the French hit men played by Luciano Rossi and Marco Guglielmi are two very satirical villains.

Maybe not quite as brilliant as "The Big Gundown", but still an excellent movie, "Run, Man, Run!" is a witty, great and very entertaining Spaghetti Western, a must see for genre-fans, but also recommended to everybody else.