The Mercenary (1968)

one of my absolute favorites!

Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

It is a whirlwind of delight --- attractive actors, stunning couture, spectacular sets and outrageous parties.

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

Il mercenario (The Mercenary) is directed by Sergio Corbucci and Corbucci co-writes the screenplay with Luciano Vincenzoni, Sergio Spina and Adriano Bolzoni. It stars Franco Nero, Tony Musante, Jacl Palance and Giovanna Ralli. Music is by Ennio Morricone and Bruno Nicolai, with cinematography by Alejandro Ulloa.It's the Mexican Revolution and Sergei "Polack" Kowalski (Nero) is a gun for hire. Hired by revolutionary Paco Roman (Musante), Kowalski muses on all the scrapes they got into before bringing the story to a present day resolution...A Technicolor/Techniscope production, Corbucci's Zapata Western is a barnstormer full of political bents, wry humour and searing action. With beautiful Spanish vistas prominent and a musical score that's like a spicy jumping bean, story holds court from beginning to end. Essentially at it's heart it's a buddy buddy piece, though these buddies are hardly what you would call rock solid. Into the mix comes the gorgeous Ralli to add the sauce, whilst as Paco and Kowalski take on the Government and its Army, they also have to contend with Curly (Palance), a camp sadistic dandy with revenge on his mind.Corbucci has a great eye for action, there's reams of gun fire, with machine guns, artillery and even a plane laying waste to bone and buildings, and usually the cruelty and carnage on show is done with a glint in the eye (milk and dice drink/grenade in mouth), and splendidly so. It's so deft that often a scene is being played out and on the side there is an execution going on, casually unfurled as matter of fact. There's also religious fervour cheekily in place, with Paco's army the Apostles and Polack their Jesus, so it's no surprise that religious imagery is placed within.Corbucci also likes to let his camera talk. Standard Pasta Western traits operate, such as close ups of the eyes, roving tracking shots, angled up tilts and glides. He also gets lucky with the weather for one shot, capturing a natural rainbow amid some more furious character action. Cast are doing sterling work. Nero is cool supreme, with awesome face fuzz and casually striking matches on various things, Nero proves to be a fine action hero and it's so easy to buy into his character. Musante is also excellent, giving Paco an earnestness that's beguiling, he's a lovable rogue, at times bumbling but utterly heroic within the revolutionary arc. While Palance, though not in it as much as you would think, is giving Curly a most intriguing persona, confusing sexuality and religious alibi.From a bullring circus opening featuring midget clowns, to a glorious clifftop turkey shoot finale, there is nary a dull moment in the pic. Top dollar Pasta Oater. 8.5/10

Also known as "The Professional Gun", this one is full of color and movement, directed with vigor and imagination. It's a marvelous return to form for director Sergio Corbucci who had recently let his admirers down rather badly with a weak Cameron Mitchell vehicle. In this film, Franco Nero is perfect in the title role – an offbeat piece of casting that works with astonishing success. Corbucci looks set to take over in Italian westerns where Clint Eastwood left off. Franco Nero is often costumed in somewhat similar apparel and Corbucci has copied Leone's use of facial and eye close-ups. Ennio Morricone's foot-tapping music score with its invigorating use of whip cracks is another plus. The rugged landscapes and Spanish-Mexican architecture are dazzlingly captured by Ulloa's color camera.

This is probably one of the first spaghetti western's I ever saw, and whilst I made sure that I watched many, many more (the good, the bad and the naff) over my youth and early adulthood, what it did most was give me a great appreciation of Ennio Morricone, whose score made the film the masterpiece it is.The film has everything you want in it: solid protagonist, creepy bad guy, entertaining side kick and kicking action sequences, all rounded off with a score so good that has been reused in Kill Bill.Like many early spaghetti's its probably never going to be shown on the telly again, and DVD's probably don't exist, but if you can get hold of a copy its well worth the effort.

... just another GOOD, BAD, UGLY clone, in fact (which seemingly nobody notices ...). But let's start where things start: 1966 was an important year, simply because one of the best movies ever made saw the light of day then: THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY is a rare piece of motion art, where really everybody involved gave his absolutely best and also succeeded in doing so. There has so much praise been said regarding this movie, that I actually don't have to add any more lines, except maybe this one: Clint Eastwood is maybe the most important director today and was certainly one of the most important and influential actors in the 60ies and 70ies and although he has made more great movies in recent movie history than anybody else, THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY (GBU) still shines as the absolutely and by far best picture he was ever involved in. Quentin Tarantino calls GBU rightly the best picture ever made and IMDb-voters have voted it # 2 of the all-time-best-list (it should be # 1, but I'm sure that will happen some day, smile).When GBU hit the screens in 1966 it was a major success in Europe, but had a somewhat slow start in the USA, but word-of-mouth got around and finally made this a HUGE hit worldwide.In Europe the narrative potential of GBU was immediately recognized and multiple clones were made in the years to come, IL MERCINARIO being one of the earlier ones.But ... well ... Sergio CORBUCCI is not Sergio Leone (despite their sharing their first name), Franco NERO is not Clint Eastwood, Tony MUSANTE is not Eli Wallach and well, Jack PALANCE is probably as good as Lee van Cleef, but his hairdo in this movie having him play a gay (?) gunfighter makes the role of the "BAD" he has to take in IL MERCINARIO somewhat ridiculous (and still this movie isn't a comedy ...). And yes, Ennio Morricone is of course Ennio Morrcione, turning in another major achievement, not as good as in GBU but also not very far from that.But Corbucci not only copied the three lead roles from GBU, there are in fact many more similarities, from the storyline of hunting stolen (!) gold up to even a scene in which Franco Nero takes bath in the desert, simply lifted and slightly changed from the GBU-scene in which Eli Wallach does the same in front of the short-from-dying Clint Eastwood. Not to mention the shoot-out scene between Nero, Palance and Musante in the bull-fighting arena with camera-shots to their hands in the very same way as on the cemetery in GBU ... anyone who's willing to watch IL MERCINARIO with GBU in mind will find more similarities. IL MERCINARIO is certainly an above-average Italo-western (which doesn't mean that much, considering the low average Italo-westerns have "achieved"), but it's still just a GBU-clone.But as said above, simply copying main elements of another movie does not necessarily lead to the same outcome although Corbucci still did it much better than many other minor directors. This also shows, how much of the enormous grandeur of GBU is owed to Sergio Leone's fantastic direction, his eye for detail and feeling for timing.This is what IL MERCINARIO is lacking most in my humble opinion: appropriate timing. Actually the screen is practically permanently crowded with too many people and there's action going on for most of the time, where in fact less would have been more. The cool scenes in between and any better-than-average characterization of the leading men is completely missing as is the dialogue seldomly on the point.A few months after seeing the GBU one will still remember many scenes, a few days after watching IL MERCINARIO one will most likely only remember the gun pointing out of the pig's head and hardly any more.