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!

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.

I don't suppose many Westerns were made in Israel, but this seems to be the most famous. It looks like they've gone for the 'Spaghetti Western' look rather than the conventional and so should appeal to those who like those movies. Well....if they can get past the terrible direction, wonky camera-work, and Leif Garrett's acting.

Van Cleef plays a preacher(looking like Satan) who is gunned down in cold blood by Palance's vicious gang. Garrett, who witnesses the event is struck dumb and heads off to Mexico to find Van Cleef's twin brother, a top gunman who vowed to his brother he would never kill with a gun again. Van Cleef heads back to avenge his brother's death, but tries to do so in a manner that doesn't involve shooting them all.

There's clearly a good Western here, but it's lost beneath the ineptitude of the film makers. That said, Van Cleef's twin performance is excellent, and Palance hams(pun not intended) it up like only he can. 5/10

The spaghetti western is/was a very specific genre, and by the standards of the day, they were a huge departure. The first several - A Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More, The Good The Bad and The Ugly, Once Upon a Time in the West, to name a few - all in the unique hands of director Sergio Leone - are classics. Those that came after - including this one, Diamante Lobo (God's Gun) - not so much. The problem starts with the script, which leaves a lot to be desired. In Leone's films, he realized that he was working with a lot of actors for whom, however good they might or might not be, English was not their first language, if in fact they even spoke it at all. So he wisely devised an approach that required very little dialogue, depending mainly on action, atmosphere, style and - yes, violence. A lot of it. In Leone's hands, this combination spoke volumes. When it came to Gianfranco Parolini (aka Fred Kramer), the magic touch just wasn't there. For Diamante Lobo/God's Gun, the script was just awful - clichéd situations, cheesy dialogue, bad continuity. This saddled some of Hollywood's most reliable actors with a difficult assignment - making a silk purse out of a sow's ear. To a great extent, they were constrained by the director, and they fell back, as actors will, on their shtick, to get them through. For some (Sybil Danning, Jack Palance, Leif Garrett), it worked better than others (Lee Van Cleef, Richard Boone). For Van Cleef, the spaghetti western was familiar territory. But playing sort of against type in such familiar surroundings - good an actor as he was - just doesn't ring quite true. Boone, in one of his last films and probably already in poor health, in addition to being miscast, was just plain disappointing. Palance chews up the scenery, as he was wont to do in many films before and after - too broad, and yet it worked. Garrett, one of Hollywood's most promising young actors at the time, hit most of the right notes. Danning - well, she didn't have much to do, but she handled it quite well. The production values were inadequate. The town looked very well turned out for a dusty old stage stop. The post production just made things worse - bad dubbing, in some cases laughable voice replacement, second-rate scoring, editing that worked against the script (although perhaps in spite of it - who knows?). In short, there was a film in there somewhere, but it didn't have a chance to show itself. Two final thoughts: Although Van Cleef was a veteran of the genre, he wasn't the best choice for role(s). Leif Garrett was quite good when allowed to be. Too many reviewers just hate on child actors as a matter of course. And quite a few deserve it. They may be cute, but they are not good. But some are genuinely talented. Garrett was among them until the music thing overtook him. One can only wonder what might have happened had he not gone the teen idol path. As an actor, he sure had the chops.

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.