Shoot First… Ask Questions Later (1975)

What a waste of my time!!!

Don't Believe the Hype

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

SAMURAI is the worst spaghetti western I've seen from the usually assured Sergio Corbucci, a director known for adding a lightness of touch to his genre movies. The problem with this one is that it's an ethnic comedy in which the typically reliable Tomas Milian comes a cropper as he dresses in yellowface and speaks gobbledegook in his role as a lowly Japanese servant. If you thought Mickey Rooney's turn in BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY'S was racially offensive, you haven't seen anything yet.The rest of the film is a tired mix of genre tropes and repetitive slapstick comedy. Giuliano Gemma shows up playing the usual square-jawed cowboy hero while Eli Wallach hangs around and looks faintly embarrassed by it all, and who can blame him? I have no idea what they were thinking when they made this one and the only folk who come across looking good are the hard-working stunt team.

Many of the problems I had with "Shoot First...Ask Questions Later" (a.k.a. "Samurai") had nothing to do with the original production. The DVD I got from Netflix was among the very worst discs I have ever seen--and that's saying a lot since I have rented thousands of their films. In fact, it might just be THE worst. It appears as if someone took an old videotape and literally filmed it with a home videocamera! The picture was super-blurry and crooked throughout. Ugly is perhaps the kindest thing I can say about the DVD! As far as the film goes, it's not a good film either. It's all about some 'Japanese' folks in the West. Some might just have been Japanese but the main one was played by the Cuban-American Toma Milian and it's undoubtedly one of the most embarrassing roles he ever took. Seeing the guy in a goofy wig, mustache and kimono looked utterly stupid. Unfortunately, the film itself never rose much above this. Probably not worth your time unless you insist on seeing EVERYTHING made by Sergio Carbucci AND you can find a better DVD copy.

I bought this DVD in a pack (3 films on one disc) for some spare change. I didn't expect much and also didn't get much. But it did make me laugh every now and again.Amasingly enough, I laughed at some of the jokes too - not just at the movie.In fact, I have to say, in this movie I saw something I though as original. A joke I haven't seen or heard anywhere else, nor did I think of anything like it. And it is not easy to find something like that, with as many comedies I've seen so far. This was something I really liked about this movie. It showed me something fresh - even though it was already very old.*spoiler*The Samurai is making a brew. The sheriff asks: "What are you making?" "It old Japanese recepy. This make you not sleep and not think of food." Sheriff: "You've got something there that will take my mind off of hunger? Give it here!" The sheriff drinks it and starts moaning really badly. The Samurai jumps up and said: "Now you no can sleep, now you no want food. You got toothache!"Or something like that (it's not a transcript, but the point of the joke).

Don't go into this film expecting a typical Corbucci high body count shoot 'em up. This time around the famous `other Sergio' takes a stab at the comedy/spaghetti sub-genre which was ever so popular in the waning days of the Euro Western. `Bianco, il giallo, il nero, Il' is more or less a bizarro take on the East meets wild West classic `Red Sun'. Eli Wallach plays `Black Jack Gideon', a straight and narrow lawman who reluctantly gets mixed up in a quest to recover a prize Japanese show pony that's being held for ransom by a renegade band of army deserters with a penchant for dressing up like Indians. Accompanying him on his journey are the notorious bandit and womanizer `Swiss', played by Giuliano Gemma and `Sakura' the dung handler turned Samurai played by Tomas Milian. Many unintentional laughs and moments of genuine surreal weirdness set to the equally strange Guido & Maurizio De Angelis score almost guarantee this film to delight fans of the genre and confuse and frighten the average viewer.