Il mercenario

This film was actually one of my favorites at a student movie theater really many years ago. It was kinda cult and thus shown quite often and the audience could have been always the same. Like many of Corbucci's works it has frequent showings on German TV. IL MERCENARIO is very comparable to the better COMPANEROS which has particularly a much better cast. It's another buddy western with a Nordic (blond) and a Mexican guy where the first is cool and intelligent and the other hot tempered and rather low witted. Compañero Milian is much slicker than Musante who many times prevails just as a fool and is closer to Tuco Ramirez of THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY. Nevertheless Musante feels more realistic as a peasant than the grimacing Milian. Nero is more dominating in his role as the mercenary of Polish origin than as the Swedish Peterson of COMPANEROS. He is never really convinced of the revolutionary values. Curly/Ricciolo (Jack Palance) seems pretty superfluous for the plot and serves as a comic relief character with an extra portion of sadism. In the absence of a real lead villain he enters the final duel.

The pace of the film is fast and the excellent (maybe Morricone's best) and rousing score supports the generous action. Machine guns are roaring and counting the bodies falling seems pretty impossible. Impressing wide screen photography immerses the viewer.

9/10 with a slight nostalgic bonus. Top 10 Spaghetti Western.

This is one of the better Spaghetti westerns from the late 1960's. Franco Nero, Tony Musante, and Jack Palance are all in good form. My DVD copy is a cheap one and seems badly edited but the fun and vibrancy of the film still comes through. A cool political western the theme of which was continued in Sergio Corbucci's next film Companeros (another very good 'Spaghetti Western').

Last week, I came across a sale of Italian DVDs of several Spaghetti Westerns; I managed to purchase 4 of them and, being one of 2 I hadn't watched before, this ended up as the first I checked out.

Actually, I had missed this on late-night Italian TV; considering that a similar 'political' Spaghetti Western directed by Corbucci and co-starring Franco Nero and Jack Palance, namely COMPANEROS (1970), had been a bit too much tongue-in-cheek for my taste, I expected this to be in the same vein. However, while certainly lighthearted in comparison with Corbucci's DJANGO (1966; which I should revisit again in a couple of days) and especially THE GREAT SILENCE (1968), it's a more balanced proposition than COMPANEROS (particularly with respect to Palance's performance - quietly menacing here as opposed to the campiness of the later film) and, thus, superior to it in practically every way.

Nero has already matured quite a bit from the youthful gunslinger in DJANGO; here, he's basically playing a variation on Clint Eastwood's iconic Man With No Name figure in Sergio Leone's "Dollars Trilogy" (incidentally, Nero's own voice resembles that of Enrico Maria Salerno - who used to dub Eastwood in those films!). Indeed, the ongoing game of cat-and-mouse revolving around Nero, Palance and Mexican revolutionary Tony Musante is clearly inspired by the tricky relationship that went on between Eastwood, Eli Wallach and Lee Van Cleef in THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY (1966)! This is most evident in the numerous scenes where the taciturn Nero gets the brash Musante out of trouble or, conversely, 'sells' him to the authorities...and even more in the rather splendid showdown between the three characters, undoubtedly the film's highlight - given another dimension by being set in a bullring with Palance sporting a wig (he's nicknamed Curly!) and Musante made up as a clown!!

Despite her belated entrance in the film, Giovanna Ralli makes quite an impression as a fiery Mexican woman who hitches up with Musante; Euro-Cult and Spaghetti Western regular Eduardo Fajardo is also on hand as the requisite figure of oppression (who, at one point, is made to eat a living lizard by Musante!). While the comedy never quite descends into spoofiness and the political content is thankfully downplayed, the action sequences are very well handled...and the film is further blessed with a memorable theme tune by the one and only Ennio Morricone (with a little help from his friend and protégé Bruno Nicolai).

A Spaghetti-Paella Western directed by Sergio Corbucci, one of the most representative directors of the genre, including an international cast and many supporting Spanish family members. This is an entertaining Zapata/Spaghetti Western set in Mexico during the confrontation between Madero and General Huertas, which includes communist revolutionaries and evil bandits. A Pole named Sergei Kowalski (Franco Nero) is a mercenary, working for the highest bidder. While Paco Román (Tony Musante), who is a laborer who works in a silver mine owned by Elías García, rebels against his boss and humiliates him and his two brothers, including Colonel Alfonso García (Eduardo Fajardo). He is soon captured, but his friends save him from the firing squad. Kowalski is ordered to transport silver to a mine, but only finds that the Mexican rebel named Paco has formed a guerrilla group and taken control. Meanwhile, Kowalski makes a deal with Elias and his brother to get their money safely across the border. However, Sergei is hired by Paco and teaches the revolutionary leader how to put his idealistic fervor into practice. They are pursued by Curly (Jack Palance), a gay gunman dressed in white. Fate brought them together, greed made them inseparable, violence made them companions!.

The picture mingles violence, thrills, shootém up, comedy with tongue in cheek and it's fast moving and that's why it's quite amusing. It's a thrilling western with overwhelming and violent shootouts between the protagonists Franco Nero and Tony Musante and the enemies Jack Palance and Eduardo Fajardo. Tony Musante, such as Tomas Milian, puts faces, laughing, crying and overacting, but he plays splendidly. Agreeable intervention of an italian beauty as Giovanna Ralli. Furthermore, here appears usual secondaries from Italian Western as Franco Ressell, Raf Baldassarre, Jose Canalejas, Alvaro De Luna, Simon Arriaga, Lorenzo Robledo, Tito Garcia, and of course Eduardo Fajardo, Corbucci's ordinary. The highlights of the film are the Tony Musante's burying edge neck similarly to Franco Nero's ¨Corbucci's The Professional ¨, the confrontion at the bullfighting square and the Polish wielding a machine gun and shooting though with anachronism because is a modern model, in fact this is a fictional machine gun similar to the one used in Django (1966): Hotchkiss Mle 1914. This film belongs to the numerous group that are set during the Mexican revolution, called ¨Zapata Western¨ , like are the Italians: ¨Leone's Duck you sucker¨, ¨ Corbucci's The professional¨ ,¨ Giulio Petroni's Tepepa¨ and the Americans : ¨Peckinpah's The wild bunch¨, ¨Buzz Kulik's Villa rides ¨, and ¨Richard Brooks' The professionals¨. There are many fine technicians and expert assistants as the cameraman Alejandro Ulloa who makes an excellent photography with barren outdoors, dirty landscapes under a glimmer sun shot on location in haunted town of Cuenca and of course Almeria, Spain. The musician Ennio Morricone composes a classic Spaghetti soundtrack and well conducted by his habitual collaborator Bruno Nicolai. Well produced by Alberto Grimaldi -PEA productions- famous producer of ¨The trilogy of the dollars¨ filmed by Sergio Leone, along with the Spanish priction 'Copercines' . Sergio Corbucci's direction is adequate , he made several classic Italian western : ¨ Django¨, ¨The great silence¨, ¨Hellbenders¨ , ¨The specialist¨ and the ¨Compañeros¨, the latter bears special resemblance to ¨ The mercenary ¨ and along with ¨ ¨What am I doing in middle of the revolution¨ belongs a Corbucci's trilogy about Mexican revolution. Rating : 6,5/10. Good Spaghetti Western.

Franco Nero, sporting a burly mustache and sideburns, stars as Segei `The Pollack' Kowalski, an angelic opportunist, who, for profit not nobility, helps a revolutionary, Paco (Tony Musante), overthrow the corrupt Mexican generals. It is a very good Spaghetti Western, with a nice pace, good action, and interesting characters playing off one another. Jack Palance is Curly, an obviously gay bad guy, whose prissy demeanor hides his ruthlessness- that is until he kills his own partner out of spite and blows a few men's heads off. The story starts with Nero establishing his badassness while catching a dice cheat, forcing the gambler to eat the dice and saying, "When you get them back, I suggest you dont use them again." He is then hired to help protect a trainload of silver make it through rebel territory to the States. Nero goes to the mining town only to find it overthrown by Paco and his gang, and the mine collapsed. Nero luckily finds himself able to offer his help to the rebels and guide Paco in the art of stealing, strategically avoiding, and attacking the corrupt army, eventually overthrowing it. But, mostly it is not a buddy-buddy relationship, Nero is in it for the money, Paco is in it for the righteousness, yet they both respect each other. (To give a good example, at one point, while crossing the desert, Nero makes Paco and the revolutionaries empty their canteens so he can have a shower while they go thirsty.)

Aside from nice bits of humor, it sports some religious allusions, such as, Paco begins with only twelve men + Nero (their Jesus), they masquerade at one point during a religious parade and attack while dressed as angels and virgin Mary's, as well as Nero being strapped to a t-shaped cross when captured. There is also a nod to Macbeth when Paco's woman uses his power drunk naiveté to convince him to turn against Nero. The film makes use of an obviously fairly high budget, with many large battles, crowd scenes, entire towns destroyed, planes bombing, and many locales. It has an interesting structure, since the bulk of the film is told in flashback before returning to the beginning and then reaching the grand finale. The Morricone score is great, and amazingly enough, very understated. Corbucci's direction has never been better.

(Any film that opens with a shot of a dwarf clown dressed like a matador, you just know is going to be good)