O Especialista - O Vingador de Tombstone

The copy of this movie that I have seen is not very good. It's grainy and has almost no color in some parts. It switches back and forth between English and French, often in mid sentence, and sometimes even in the middle of a word! To make matters much worse, there are no English subtitles during the French language parts, which I think make up at least one quarter of the film. But, amazingly, the movie is still very understandable and enjoyable, even in this condition, and I think that says a lot about how well-made this film is.

This is a top notch spaghetti western with great acting, an interesting storyline, and an excellent music score. It also has a cool protagonist, a beautiful dark-haired girl, some strange characters and events, and an overall feeling of melancholy. This film has "Euro" written all over it.

I hope there is a pristine negative or print of this film out there somewhere, because it deserves a quality DVD release, and when it comes out I will be one of the first in line to get it!

You gotta love the spaghetti western universe. The vision of a west where good guys get shot point blank with no warning, cartoonish villains chew the scenery in extreme close-ups, and the anti-hero walks away from the girl in the end. A lot of people call Corbucci's films 'depressing'. I find that a bit dodgy as far as descriptions go. I think bleak and unforgiving are more apt mostly because 'depressing' suggests a level of sentimentality almost every Eurowestern director ignored in favour of painting characters in broad strokes.

GLI SPECIALISTI must be seen in all its widescreen glory before it can take its proper place in the Sergio Corbucci canon. It's a beautiful movie. And it makes sense that Corbucci wanted to blow off some steam with COMPANEROS after the unremitting one two punch of THE GREAT SILENCE and this (although he would later revert back to his usual tricks with the foulmouthed SONNY AND JED). There's still a certain amount of caricature that detracts from the overall grimness of the movie, imo it hurts more than does any good to have a needless inclusion of three kids dressed like hippies skulking around town in search of gold and trouble. And it hurts to have Mario Adorf playing Mexican one-handed bandit El Diablo as over the top as he always plays his characters.

Those minor gripes aside there's more than enough here to wet the palate of the spaghetti aficionado. Shootouts galore, the population of an entire town reduced to crawling naked in the dirt, the typical iconic badassitude of the laconic antihero (played by Johnny Halliday), the moral bankruptcy of almost every character in the movie. Corbucci might never receive the acclaim of the more famous Sergio or the American patriarchs of the genre but you and I know that's a gross injustice for a very talented director. His dynamic shot selection, in depth staging with objects sticking close to the camera and receding in the background, his flair for quick pacing and feverish energy in moving a story that wasn't always all that along, the way he photographs open spaces, everything in his work makes me sure that if Corbucci was American and had emerged 15 years later along with Mann and Hawks, the Cahiers du Cinema critics would have lauded him as an auteur worthy of serious critical consideration.

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.

Talk about Johnny Hallyday a famous singer star no make sense, as French-Italian production it was used as vehicle for him aiming for draw attention of his fans, playing something alike Clint Eastwood typecast character, thus worthwhile discuss the supporting casting as Mario Adorf, Françoise Fabian and Gastone Moschin, firstly several sources state that Corbucci had a stormy rapport with Françoise Fabian by asking for make several nasty sequences, as nude scenes and mainly on final collective r.a.p.e. Whereof she didn't agreed whatsoever.

Also those juvenile's gang exposing a filthy behavior mostly of time reminds us on that fresh hippie movement ongoing on late sixties as well, further when Hud decides burn the money it depicts a rebelliousness of its time and primary by final nude sequence of the whole towners men and women laid on the ground, all these elements altogether take us to figure out a sadist offering by the bleak Corbucci, doubtless his most unseemly picture ever made, setting out his dark side, there are other good thing to point out as the breathtaking landscape on high frozen mountain at Cortina d'Ampezzo at north Italy.

Thanks for reading.

Resume: First watch: 2024 / How many: 1 / Source: DVD / Rating: 7.

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....