A Arma Divina

The strangest thing of all about this terrible western is that while it has the look feel and especially the SOUND (loud, overdone) of a spaghetti western, most of the talent involved in the top positions were not European, including the director. Also, the three male leads did not sound right. The lead Lee van Cleef, sounded like himself most of the time , but Jack Palance and Richard Boone were dubbed. This is especially clear with Richard Boone who has a very distinctive voice. If someone out there can tell me why you would dub a distinctive sounding American actor's voice into English, please tell me. I liked the plot twist of the twin brother but this is a bad movie. Enough said!

The indescribably poor DVD-quality almost ruined the entire movie for me. "God's Gun" is part of a Three-Pack DVD of Lee Van Cleef spaghetti western films, the other two being "Kid Vengeance" and "Death Rides a Horse". The box looks nice and it's a great initiative to release more of Van Cleef's work on DVD, but the picture and sound quality are terribly, terribly poor! The colors are faded and most of the time you can't even make out the eyes or the expressions on the characters' faces. It's far worse than a VHS which stood on the bottom shelf of a videostore for the past 20 years, so watch out in case you consider purchasing this puppy on DVD. The film itself is fine, and I don't really understand all the harsh and negative comments by the other reviewers. The plot isn't exactly original and the film clearly lacks the touch of a professional genre director like Leone or Corbucci, but as long as you're simply expecting to see macho cowboys wiping each other out with pistols and shotguns, you can't possibly be disappointed. Any western that combines the talents and charisma of Lee Van Cleef and Jack Palance is worth tracking down if you ask me, and even more so if it also contains guest appearances by Richard Boone and Sybil Danning. Van Cleef plays the priest of a peaceful little town that suddenly gets invaded by a sadistic gang of criminals led by Jack Palance. The priest is killed when he tries to uphold justice in the little town, but his youthful acolyte escapes and seeks the help of twin-brother Lewis who lives in Mexico. Together they return to avenge Father John's dead and clear the town of crime once and for all. The script of "God's Gun" is very clichéd and contains too many stupid improbabilities. For example, Johnny finds Lewis in less than two days even though he only knew he lived "somewhere in Mexico" and – moreover – he can't even ask for directions because he's struck mute. For some reason, there are also two totally redundant and overlong flashback sequences that don't add anything to the story. Naturally, the cast of characters are dreadful stereotypes, including the drunkard Sheriff and the gorgeous, voluptuous wenches in the local saloon. The music and many of the inventive camera angles are directly stolen from "The Good, The Bad and The Ugly". Oh well, at least the gunfights are violent & nasty, and Jack Palance is the ultimately cool baddie.

A preacher (Lee Van Cleef) is gunned down by a cutthroat gang (leading Jack Palance) . The son (Leif Garret) of a Saloon girl (Sybil Danning) is looking for the priest's brother , an ex-gunfighter (again Van Cleef) . The gunman seeks vengeance on the evil men who murdered him . Lee Van Cleef is better in the two first films from ¨Sabata¨ trilogy directed by Frank Kramer or Gianfranco Parolini , (the third was starred by Yul Brynner) than here . These movies are enjoyable , full of gadgets , imagination , with enough budget and produced by Alberto Grimaldi (successful producer of Sergio Leone's Dollars trilogy) , here the producers are Menahem Golan and Yoran Globus (Cannon Productions) but in short budget and being middlingly directed by Gianfranco Parolini or Frank Kramer.

The picture displays action , gun-play , showdown , and drama but badly narrated ; besides , being in minimum budget and wasted casting . The movie has an awful cinematography and disappointing musical score . Jack Palance (recently deceased) as the exaggerated band leader is overacting , as usual , he plays a megalomaniac nasty in an overdone as well as excessive interpretation . There appears Cody Palance , Jack Palance's son (he had another daughter actress named Holly Palance , too) , unhappily , he early died . Richard Boone is underestimated in a minor role , in spite of getting a long career in classic Westerns . The teen singer Leif Garret as a dumb adolescent is mediocre , he played with Lee Van Cleef another spaghetti Western in similar style : ¨Kid vengeance¨ , being his maxim feat the acting as secondary in ¨Outsiders¨ (by Francis Ford Coppola) , later his career really failed . The motion picture was appallingly directed by Gianfranco Parolini who used the pseudonym of Frank Kramer . He began directing muscle-men epics as ¨Rocha¨, ¨The Macabeos¨ with Brad Harris and ¨The ten gladiators¨ with Dan Davis and Gianni Rizzo , Parolini's usual actor . After that , he continued with ¨commissioner X¨ series with Tony Kendall , fantastic genre with ¨Three supermen¨ and warlike movie as ¨5 per l'Inferno¨ with Gianni Garco (Sartana) and Nick Jordan . His first Western was ¨Johnny West¨ and later on , he directed the ¨Sabata trilogy¨ . Rating : Frustating , far fetching and uninspired Western .

I bought this DVD for $3 in a bargain bin. I was expecting a horrid movie with an outside shot at "so bad it's funny", but was pleasantly surprised by it.

The plot was actually OK. The idea was good and there were a couple of interesting twists. On the bad side, the movie was poorly made, the style was completely ripped off from the spaghetti westerns, and some of the acting was terrible. Still worth a viewing, though.

I give it a 8/10 for plot, 5/10 for acting and dialogue, and 3/10 for production values. Because the plot is the most important thing (are you listening George Lucas?), I give it an overall rating of 6/10.

Actually, this is just a comment. I did not find the movie as bad as ejhutchez, but I did enjoy it. (I am a westerns freak, so that may have had something to do with it). Make no mistake, it is no classic- but it is watchable. Anyways, the point I wanted to make is that the three American stars, all of whom- particularly Jack Palance- have trade mark voices and ways of talking were all poorly dubbed by what seem (or rather sound) to be Italian actors. That just strikes me as really weird. I do agree that the dual roles played by Van Cleef were the best part of the movie by far and that Boone and Palance did indeed seem to be walking through their parts. Still, it's better than a Tom Cruise movie.