Amigo!... Mon colt a deux mots à te dire

Bud Spencer teams up with a kid in this rather charming, but cheap, Italian comedy Western. Jack Palance provides back up as a cigar chomping, riled brother of a chick Spencer slept with, hoping to marry Spencer off and then kill him (to save face). They all end up in a town run by Sheriff/Judge/Reverend Francisco Rabal, who wants the property that the kid's inherited. But why? That's up to Spencer and the kid to find out, but needless to say the kid's sitting on a fortune.

This mostly harmless western has Spencer as the reluctant hero, protecting a kid he doesn't want to protect and getting into many punch ups. Palance turns up periodically to save Spencer (he wants to kill him himself) and for some reason he's got an accent that turns from Southern to Mexican for no reason whatsoever. Everything's played pretty light (no one gets killed, save for the kid's uncle who has a heart attack).

As with all Italian comedies, the laughs are played very broad (verging on slapstick), and there's unintentional and intentional laughs. There's also a touching moment when the kid starts showing Spencer a bit of affection and you can see Spencer's torn between his duties in looking after the kid and his own need to get out of town. The film also benefits from having one of the least annoying kids in Italian cinema (If you've seen House by the Cemetery or Sweet House of Horrors, you'll know that's no understatement).

The abrupt ending seems to endorse wife-beating, however, so I'm not sure what that was about! Did give me a laugh, though…The print I viewed was awful - drained of colour, pan and scanned, with a weird echo for the first 30 minutes.

Released in 1972 (but not in the USA until 1974), "It Can be Done… Amigo" is an Italian oater starring Ben Spencer as a gentle giant, Coburn, saved from unjust hanging. He becomes the caretaker of a little boy who's the heir of a remote ranch that many people are interested in obtaining for some reason. Jack Palance plays a comical gunfighter/pimp who insists that Coburn marries his nagging sister (Dany Saval) because he was previously intimate with her.

In spirit, but not plot, this is basically an early 70's Euro version of 1963's "McLintock!" Unfortunately it was lost in translation for me. Obviously a lot of effort was put into it, but it failed to engage. It's also marred by the limitations of most Spaghetti Westerns, like dubious dubbing. Plus there should've been more prominent women (Saval is likable, but she just grates on the nerves after a while). Still, the movie's likable; it's just very eccentric, which limits its appeal, but I'll give it another try in a few years.

The film runs 109 minutes and was shot in Almería, Andalucía, Spain.

GRADE: C- (4.5/10 Stars)

Hiram Coburn is not the typical spaghetti western protagonist. He doesn't use a gun, instead opting to pound his opponents silly with his fists, and although he is as powerful as an ox, he is mellow and laid back to an annoying degree. He takes some getting used to, but by the end of the film I found myself liking this character. Jack Palance plays Sonny, an eccentric gunslinger (what Palance does best). He is very entertaining, and I would have liked to have seen more of him in the film. The weirdest thing about him is that his accent keeps changing. Sometimes he sounds like he is from the southeastern US, other times he sounds Mexican, and other times he sounds like he's from Chicago or something. I don't know if this is intentional or not, but it sure is odd, and odd is a good thing in a spaghetti western.

The music score by Bacalov is excellent. It reminds me of some of Morricone's work, which is pretty much the best compliment one could give.

The story is great, and just about the most original one I've ever seen in a spaghetti western. The movie is a comedy, but not to the extent that it becomes completely unbelievable. I may have given this movie a higher rating if I saw it in a more complete, widescreen version. The version I saw, which I assume is the most commonly available, is approximately 98 minutes long if I remember correctly, and it feels like it's been edited somewhat to shorten its length.

All in all, this one's a must-have if you are a spaghetti western nut like me.

Bud Spencer wanders the west, finds time to help a young orphan/landowner targeted by greedy villains, and keeps having his bacon saved by Jack Palance. However, Jack's motives are anything but altruistic, as he blames poor Bud for allegedly deflowering his sister and plans on marrying her off to him before making her a respectable widow!

Lots of Rowdy fights and amusing gags, including the hilarious oil-soaked climax, keep this breezy, lightweight spaghetti western moving along quite nicely.

It Can Be Done... Amigo features what is probably Spencer's best solo performance, apart from his films with frequent on screen partner Terrance Hill, though A Reason To Live, A Reason To Die, which featured him as part of an ensemble cast, was a better film.

Meanwhile, Palance portrays the same black clad, chuckling, chain-smoking weirdo you've come to know and love from a lifetime of similar western roles. Needless to say, fans of these two won't be disappointed.

One thing that I found odd though, was Palance's changing accents. Sometimes he talked using his own voice, other times he spoke with a southern accent, and still others with a Spanish accent!

One of Bud Spencer's star vehicles without his partner Terence Hill takes him back to familiar Spaghetti Western territory. Despite a good cast (Jack Palance, Francisco Rabal, Luciano Pigozzi) and crew (screenwriters Rafael Azcona and Ernesto Gastaldi, cinematographer Aldo Tonti and composer Luis Enriquez Bacalov), the film rambles amiably along without ever becoming sufficiently memorable.

Spencer seduces Palance's virginal sister (having mistook her in the dark for another dance-hall girl) and flees from her pursuing pistolero/showman brother until he meets an abandoned child in the desert whom he takes under his wing (shades of two films Bud would later make with CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND [1977]'s Cary Guffey); as it turns out, the boy is the proprietor of a dilapidated wellspring which turns out to be rich in oil but they soon fall foul of outwardly harmless sheriff/judge/preacher Rabal. Spencer indulges himself in several of his typical fist-fights and even "Paco" Rabal gets to taste his trademark hammer-blow to the head; amusingly, he puts on his glasses before a fight so that he can think more clearly! Palance scores best as Spencer's laid-back, black-clad, pursuer-cum-partner and brother-in-law to-be. The title song is an agreeable one although it's only played during the opening and closing credits sequences.

I have missed out on this one several times on Italian TV over the years but I did catch the free-for-all finale once; since the quality of the DVD I watched was quite terrible – not just pan-and-scanned but extremely washed out as to lapse into practically black and white at various points!; although it was nice to hear Palance and Rabal's own voices in English, I'll make it a point to tape this one when it's shown again on one of the major Italian TV channels.