Movie Review: Mr. Majestyk (1974)

1974's Mr. Majestyk is a curious little early action film that's largely been forgotten, despite having a reasonably large pedigree.

It stars timeless tough guy Charles Bronson as Vince Majestyk.

It was written by pulp western and crime novelist Elmore Leonard.

And it was directed by big picture filmmaker Richard Fleischer, who directed 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Soylent Green, Fantastic Voyage and, uh, Conan the Destroyer.

Its about a grumpy Vietnam veteran with a criminal record who now owns a melon farm in Colorado. All he wants to do is bring in his harvest for the year, but fate seems to have it out for him.

Sounds like a Steinbeck novel about the plight of the working class and death of the American Dream, right?

Wrong. This is Bronson we're talking about, not Tom Joad.

After a confrontation with a small time shakedown scheme, Majestyk gets arrested on bogus charges. During a stay in prison, he meets mob hitman Frank Renda, played by gangster character actor Al Lettieri. The two hate each other immediately.

When the mob tries to spring Renda during a prisoner transfer, a firefight with the cops ensues. In the chaos, Majestyk grabs the keys to Renda's handcuffs and drives off with him in the prison bus. Renda tries to cut a deal, but Majestyk has other plans.

He wants to hand the hitman over to the police in exchange for dropping the charges against him so he can go back to his melon farm. It doesn't work out as planned. Renda escapes and boy is he mad.

The good news is that the charges against Majestyk got dropped. The bad news is that Renda's out to kill him. The best news is that he can go back to his melon harvest. On one condition: That he act as bait to lure out Renda.

The harvest is brought in successfully. He starts up a relationship with migrant worker and union activist Nancy Chavez (Linda Cristal). He helped her out at the beginning of the movie and hired her group.

But then tragedy!

Renda makes his move, but Majestyk's not at home, so the mobster settles for the next best thing: destroying the melon harvest with sad violin music playing over it. I swear it makes more sense in context.

What follows is a very satisfying road to revenge. Its got shootouts. Its got an old Ford pickup barreling down perilous mountain trails with Bronson bouncing around in the flatbed shooting a shotgun. Its got ramp jumps. Its got a car going over the side of a cliff and exploding. Its got Bronson jumping through a window blasting away with his shotgun.

Its good stuff.

There's a few nods to the labor disputes of the early 70s, but at its core, its basically a libertarian western. The man just wants to get his harvest in and make some money, and the cops do nothing except get in the way of that.

Everybody else in the movie thinks he's crazy, since with all the madness going on, his main fixation is the melon harvest. But in context, it makes sense. Its his livelihood and independence on the line, and he'd be ruined it he couldn't sell the crop. Even the melon massacre works in that context. The hero and villain both understand the symbolism of the crop.

There are some slower parts here and there, but Leonard's script keeps things building nicely.

It may not be his finest work, but at the end of the day, its Charles Bronson kicking ass for a hundred minutes. What more do you need to recommend it?

"Figure a man's only good for one oath at a time"

Over the weekend I watched John Ford's 1956 Western masterpiece The Searchers. And in calling it a “masterpiece,” in the first sentence, I'm already recommending it. Its great. Watch it.

Its about a Confederate veteran of the Civil War, Ethan Edwards (John Wayne) returning to his brother's farm in Texas to settle down after some probably violent and illegal adventuring after the war. He's a proud man, but damaged, and wants to settle down with his loving kin. Except his adopted nephew Martin Pawley (Jeffrey Hunter, who would play Captain Pike for the pilot episode of Star Trek before his untimely death in 1969 at the age of 42), who's part-Indian and well-meaning, but kind of a hot-blooded idiot.

The two ride out with a posse of Rangers investigating missing cattle, find signs of the Comanche, and then the Edwards family back home is slaughtered in a raid. Except for the little girl, Debbie, who's taken by the raiders.

This sends Ethan and Martin on a desperate, five-year search for the girl that also turns into a meditation on the nature of vengeance and the toll it takes, both on those that seek it, and the people surrounding them.

Its gritty without being graphic, and doesn't shy away from some pretty harsh themes. The Comanche under a chief named Scar are brutal raiders, but Scar has his own motivation that makes sense without making him too sympathetic. He's also obsessed with blind vengeance. For their part, Ethan and Martin do some pretty rotten stuff too when faced with some tough decisions, and people end up dying because of it.

But what really hammered home the genius of Ford as a director, is the raid on the Edwards homestead. The movie spends the first fifteen minutes or so establishing Ethan's family and hometown as a nice place filled with good and occasionally quirky people. The character actors play their parts well and while they're painted with broad strokes, they're likable. Which is important, because around the 20 minute mark, it all goes down.

The posse establishes that the Comanche are on a murder raid, looking to kill some settlers. Two farms are singled out as possible targets, and the party rides to the closest one first.

It ends up being the wrong one.

What follows is one of the most effective horror scenes I've ever seen in a movie. Its not a spoiler because its the instigating event of the entire movie.

Its evening at the Edwards farm. The sunset casts a reddish glow and one by one the family starts to realize that all is not well. Each time that realization spreads, the tension ratchets up, first with the parents trying to keep calm and lay low, then accelerating when the older daughter, Lucy, realizes what's going on and screams, prompting her mother to slap her to shut her up.

They know.

They know what's coming.

So in their last minutes, they send their youngest daughter, Debbie (played by the Wood sisters, Lana as the younger version, Natalie as a 15 year old) to a hiding place away from the house. Only its not a great hiding place, and we get our first glimpse of Scar as he walks up to her, looks down, and blows the signal.

Fade to black.

The scene tells you everything you need to know about what's going to happen. Their reactions, their resignation, their despair. You don't need to see it on screen because the violence of the moment is in your mind, and I can guarantee that its going to be bloodier than anything the Hays Production Code would've allowed.

Its genius.

I'm not going to bother finding the clip and linking it, because you need that first twenty minutes of setup to provide context. Its probably not my favorite John Ford/John Wayne film (which is maybe Stagecoach, but I need to see more).

Highest recommendation. Watch this movie. 

“How would you like to bite that in the butt, develop lockjaw, and be dragged to death?”

Can't really believe I've gone this long with this project without doing a Chuck Norris movie. THIS CHANGES NOW, with 1983's Lone Wolf McQuade, perhaps the most Chuck Norris of Chuck Norris movies.

Story

J.J. McQuade (Chuck Norris) is a damn good Texas Ranger, but also an antisocial loner and a slob. Oh, and he has a pet wolf. He plays by his own rules, and doesn't appreciate when his chief saddles him with an enthusiastic local cop, Kayo Ramos (Robert Beltran, who was Chakotay on Star Trek Voyager) whom he rescued on his most recent solo operation. McQuade, his recently retired mentor Dakota (L.Q. Jones), Ramos and later an FBI agent named Jackson (Leon Isaac Kennedy) proceed to get swept up into a scheme to stop martial artist gun smuggler Rawley Wilkes (David Carradine) from running weapons stolen from the US military to Mexican cartels.

What follows is a strange set of events where McQuade beats up thugs, falls in love with Lola Richardson (Bond Girl Barbara Carrera), the widow of Rawley's old partner, meets another of Rawley's old partners, Falcon, a little person in a motorized wheel chair who owns a horse track and an office with supervillain touches, and eventually pisses Rawley off so much that the villain tries to kill and/or kidnap most of the people McQuade cares about (and does a pretty good job of it). This culminates in a shootout in Mexico where McQuade and his surviving allies hunt down Rawley to rescue McQuade's teenage daughter Sally (Dana Kimmell). Naturally it comes down to a brawl between McQuade and his headband vs Rawley in a white argyle sweater.

Visuals

Director Steve Carver takes every opportunity to frame and shoot McQuade as heroically as possible. The rest of the movie consists of showing the rugged country side of the area around El Paso, Texas, and dudes getting beat up and shot by Chuck Norris. Some of them wear cowboy hats. Action scenes are generally entertaining in that Golan-Globus “we don't have squibs or fake blood” sort of way. The last fight between Norris and Carradine (and it IS Norris and Carradine, they insisted on not using stunt men for it) is actually pretty decent too.

Oh yeah, and this happens too:

Writing

Screenplay by B.J. Nelson, Story by H. Kaye Dyal & B.J. Nelson. Well, it's an 80s action movie script, so a lot of the characters are flat out archetypes and there aren't many surprises there. Yet still the movie manages to surprise by having said characters do unexpected things that make perfect sense given their personalities. McQuade driving his truck out of a makeshift grave is not something you see every day, and it does fit the character. McQuade himself is a stone-faced callback to Clint Eastwood's nameless gunslinger, but the side characters have a lot of personality, like Dakota, who drawls out all sorts of odd sayings.

Sound

Not much to say about the original score by Francesco De Masi other than it goes bombastic frequently enough but also nods back to Morricone's spaghetti western soundtracks.

Conclusion

Lone Wolf McQuade is very much an 80s action movie. It moves briskly, gives you familiar character types, gives you lots of action sequences, bickering heroes, one-liners, and still manages to work in some surprises every now and then. It's a solid B movie.

“When you have to shoot, shoot. Don’t talk.”

So this is the big one of the Dollars Trilogy. The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly AKA Il buono, il brutto, il cattivo from 1966. The one that a lot of people point to as “the best Western ever.” I don’t exactly agree with that.

Plot

During the later stages of the American Civil War, an uneasy duo of bounty hunter and outlaw hustle law enforcement, until the bounty hunter decides to finally sell out the outlaw. The outlaw wants revenge, and his pursuit of the bounty hunter sets them both on a collision course with buried treasure and a sinister Union officer. 

The movie is much longer than that, though.

Characters

“Blondie”: Clint Eastwood (as usual) continuing to be mysterious and inscrutable. He’s still kind of a dick, too, teaming up with Tuco to scam and split bounty rewards. Curiously, he doesn’t start out the story with his trademark poncho. He gets that and his other accoutrements over the course of the movie. That, and his increasing number of occasional kind acts (he is “The Good” after all), hints at character development, which is not something our nameless protagonist has had much of over the trilogy. It’s also never outright stated, but the Civil War setting and aforementioned poncho acquiring implies this is a prequel of sorts to the first two movies. Does it matter from a narrative perspective? Not really.

Tuco Benedicto Pacifico Juan Maria Ramirez (known as “The Rat”): Eli Wallach is our viewpoint character, and if Blondie’s kind of a dick, Tuco’s a complete bastard. Robbery, murder, torture, fraud, scamming everyone he meets…Tuco is a survivalist well-suited to the harsh landscape and looks out only for himself. It’s a credit to Wallach’s hammy yet intense performance that he makes such a repulsive character so entertaining to watch. Yet when he gets his occasional comeuppances, its actually pretty deserved, and even in the prison camp interrogation, it’s hard to feel sympathy for Tuco, since he’s been such a backstabbing bastard up to that point. But there are moments where you almost do feel sympathy for him, especially in the monastery where he meets his brother and the viewer gets a glimpse at what makes him tick. He may not be beyond redemption, but he is certainly “The Ugly” and one of the great screen rogues.

Sentenza “Angel Eyes”: Lee Van Cleef returns, this time as the villain of the piece. Angel Eyes is introduced as a sinister assassin who honors his contracts and can’t be negotiated with by his victims, but doesn’t hesitate to kill his employer for another contract. Utterly ruthless, merciless, and pragmatic, he‘s also less disturbing than El Indio. Van Cleef does the role well, but it lacks the nuance and development that Colonel Mortimer had in the previous film. Even his motivation for wanting the gold is vague. Greed, I suppose, but the character is “The Bad” and lacks the layers that make him more than simply cold-blooded.

Alcoholic Union Captain: Aldo Giuffrè plays a side character so minor that he doesn’t even register a name in the credits, yet he is a scene stealer. An officer who knows the back-and-forth fight for an inconsequential bridge is accomplishing nothing but the slaughter of his own men, he copes with nihilistic alcoholism. Until Blondie and Tuco show up and give him an explosive sendoff. 

The Sights

Director Sergio Leone displays a technical confidence in his filmmaking here. Gone are the day-for-night scenes from Fistful. Easily the most polished of the three in editing, composition, and cinematography. Juxtaposition of desolate long shots and extreme close-ups of weathered, craggy faces are also done very well. It’s also the biggest in sense of scale, with large crowds of extras in the towns and even a Civil War bridge skirmish that ends in a sizable explosion. For being about such ugly subject matter, this movie sure is pretty.

The Story

Story by: Luciano Vincenzoni & Sergio Leone. Screenplay: Agenore Incrocci, Furio Scarpelli, Luciano Vincenzoni, & Sergio Leone. English version by Mickey Knox. That’s a fair number of names, and the script seems to be the weakest element. Not for the core plot, that’s tightly arranged, and the climactic scene is one of the most amazing showdowns in movie history. Seriously, it is THAT good.

I didn’t warm to the episodic nature of the film. This is a very, very long movie that wanders around in some places.  These scenes aren’t bad by any means, but they lack the narrative tightness of the previous two movies. Things are a little more stretched out. There’s less sense of urgency or of the stakes being as high or immediate to the characters. The bridge battle has nothing to do with the rest of the movie other than “Blondie and Tuco stumble upon it” like it was some random encounter. It’s a well-done scene and hey, I’m not anti-explosions, but it could conceivably be cut and the film wouldn’t lose much. Tuco & Blondie don’t really develop further as a result of it. It just feels like a heavy-handed way of getting across the message that war is full of pointless loss of life over arbitrarily chosen objectives. 

A curious aspect of the film is its sympathetic portrayal of the Confederacy. Obviously not for the slavery aspect of the South, but the only Confederates we see in the movie tend to be maltreated prisoners of war: the infantry, the cannon-fodder, the schlubs. The Union has a more even spread of sympathetic and unsympathetic characters (about two and two, regarding speaking roles). Yet this is a movie released in 1966, when racial tensions ran high, and if this were an American production, it is highly unlikely that the Confederacy would have received such a portrayal. Not to imply that there weren’t sympathetic people among the Confederacy. Both sides in a war have good and bad people caught up in them, and a large number of rebel soldiers in the Civil War were not themselves slave owners…

And I’m getting off topic. Suffice it to say, historical reality is a complicated thing, and it is curious that the movie is so well regarded in a country where the shorthand opinion of the Civil War is “Confederacy = Bad.”

The Sounds

Original Music by Ennio Morricone. He really knocked it out of the park on this one. The incredible Main Theme, the Ecstasy of Gold, etc. Like the rest of the trilogy, this is the glue that really holds the movie together and elevates it to another level of quality. It can’t be stressed enough.

The Verdict

The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly is a good movie, no doubt. Best Western? Nah, that’s a hotel chain. Best Spaghetti Western? Maybe. It’s technical skill is superlative and the climax is amazing. Yet I can’t shake the feeling that the overall package is somehow less than the sum of its excellent parts. For me, the best of the trilogy is For A Few Dollars More, which features more consistently good character work, a tighter plot, and fewer digressions about social commentary that lack subtlety. 

Watching this movie is definitely worthwhile, but seeing only this one does a disservice to the rest of the trilogy, which is very, very good overall.


*Note: The trailer lies and switches the Bad with the Ugly.

“When the chimes end, pick up your gun.”

A year after the success of A Fistful of Dollars, Sergio Leone and Clint Eastwood re-teamed in 1965 to make For a Few Dollars More (AKA Per qualche dollaro in più), which has the benefit of not being a remake of Yojimbo.


The Plot
Two bounty hunters, Colonel Douglas Mortimer (Lee Van Cleef) and a man referred to as “Monco” on account of him using his left hand for everything except shooting (Clint Eastwood) ply their trade across the west when a vicious bandit, El Indio (Gian Maria Volonté) and his gang break out of prison.  El Indio’s got a hefty bounty out for his gang, and the two bounty hunters cross paths and eventually decide to team up take down the gang as it plans an ambitious bank robbery.

Volonté returns from the last movie as a new bad guy, and manages to be even more psychotic and disturbing than Rojo was. To give you an idea of how villainous El Indio is, he tracks down the man responsible for putting him in prison, tortures him, then has his wife and 18 month old baby shot offscreen, then, satisfied that the man hates him enough, he flips open a musical watch. When the music stops, its time to shoot. Naturally Indio wins. Beyond mere sadism, Volonté gives the character a manic-depressive personality that he switches between with alarming suddenness. The impression it gives is of a man who gets any kind of enjoyment out of life by pushing people to the point of violence against him, then giving them a chance at revenge with the odds skewed in his favor, and then finishing them off. Which is really messed up. Oh, and one of his henchmen, Juan the Hunchback, is played by Klaus Kinski.

 Colonel Mortimer has more complicated reasons for going after El Indio. Revenge reasons. Without spoiling anything, he’s got some pretty damn good reasons for hating El Indio. More relatable than Monco, Mortimer is essentially the real protagonist, since he’s the one you can relate to more. Van Cleef really nails the old soldier archetype as he plays a wily veteran next to Monco’s more youthful bravado, but Mortimer’s also a character with a lot of pain locked away. That sadness and hatred really come to the surface in the final shootout, which is all done and seen in Van Cleef’s eyes. That’s some amazing acting right there.

The Visuals
Sergio Leone had a real budget this time! No more obvious day-for-night scenes and the whole movie has a more polished feel to it. Much like the previous film, it sets a fantastic mood with harsh landscapes and supporting characters with equally harsh features.  Leone even adds some artsy flourishes, such as ending a scene on El Indio laughing madly and cutting to a wanted poster of him with that same expression. Little things like that.

The Story
Screenplay by Luciano Vincenzoni & Sergio Leone. Dialogue by Luciano Vincenzoni (and Uncredited Fernando Di Leo & Sergio Donati). On a superficial level, its rather similar to A Fistful, since it involves Clint hunting bad guys in the name of a lot of money. Eastwood’s poncho wearing drifter is much the same here. Mysterious, deadpan, and essentially motivated by greed. Then again, it works quite well, so why mess with it?

Volonté returns as a new bad guy, and manages to be even more psychotic and disturbing than Rojo was. To give you an idea of how villainous El Indio is, he tracks down the man responsible for putting him in prison, tortures him, then has his wife and 18 month old baby shot offscreen, then, satisfied that the man hates him enough, he flips open a musical watch. When the music stops, its time to shoot. Naturally Indio wins. Beyond mere sadism, Volonté gives the character a manic-depressive personality that he switches between with alarming suddenness. The impression it gives is of a man who gets any kind of enjoyment out of life by pushing people to the point of violence against him, then giving them a chance at revenge with the odds skewed in his favor, and then finishing them off. Which is really messed up. Oh, and one of his henchmen, Juan the Hunchback, is played by Klaus Kinski.

 Colonel Mortimer has more complicated reasons for going after El Indio. Revenge reasons. Without spoiling anything, he’s got some pretty damn good reasons for hating El Indio. More relatable than Monco, Mortimer is essentially the real protagonist, since he’s the one you can relate to more. Van Cleef really nails the old soldier archetype as he plays a wily veteran next to Monco’s more youthful bravado, but Mortimer’s also a character with a lot of pain locked away. That sadness and hatred really come to the surface in the final shootout, which is all done and seen in Van Cleef’s eyes. That’s some amazing acting right there, and it’s the culmination of an entire movie’s worth of build up.

The Sounds
Ennio Morricone’s score continues to be an essential cog in the Leone Western. Here, it ups the ante a bit by integrating the musical watch theme brilliantly into the movie. As an omen of impending death, the watch begins as a haunting, melancholy, almost sinister sound. By the final showdown, it transforms into a harbinger of vengeance. Hard to explain in words, but damn. It works so damn well.

The Verdict
For A Few Dollars More is an amazing movie. A tight script, great acting, slick visuals and an incredible score knock it out of the park. A damn fine Spaghetti Western, and a damn fine Western, period.

“When a man’s got money in his pocket he begins to appreciate peace.”

That was a hiatus that went on longer than expected. Hard work is hard.

I've covered a few Spaghetti Westerns here at RMWC before, which tend to be fun and wacky, and often blatant imitations of Sergio Leone's seminal Man With No Name trilogy. Leone obviously didn't invent the Western, nor was he the first man to film one in Europe with mostly European actors, but he sure as hell put his stamp on it.

In 1964 A Fistful of Dollars (AKA Per un pugno di dollari), an “unofficial remake” (that led to a lawsuit by Japanese Studio Toho) of Akira Kurosawa’s 1961 film Yojimbo (which was itself inspired partly by the Westerns of John Ford). And in turn, Yojimbo/Fistful was remade as Last Man Standing. 

Legal stuff is complicated.

Story

Clint Eastwood shoots dudes. 

Ok, fine, there’s more to it. A mysterious drifter rides into the little town of San Miguel and finds two gangs fighting over who will get to run the town. Sensing there’s money to be made, he starts playing off both sides, hiring himself out as a gunfighter to both groups at his convenience. 

Characters

“Joe”: Clint Eastwood’s breakout role as the flint-eyed stoic anti-hero of the movie. Joe’s not his name, its just what some of the locals take to calling him. While certainly not a bad guy (he doesn't kill any innocents) he’s still a greedy, selfish, callous man. Exactly the kind of man to thrive in a world as harsh as the one Leone builds for him. There certainly isn't a lot of variety to his expressions in this movie, but Eastwood clearly displays the steely nerve that cemented his future roles as relentless badasses. Which isn't to say he’s completely mirthless. The scene where he demands an apology from four thugs for insulting his mule is some fun black comedy, but “Joe’s” sense of humor is a deadpan, sardonic sort that only surfaces rarely. He also has an awesome poncho and a fondness for stubby cigars. 

Don Miguel Benito Rojo: Antonio Prieto is the nominal leader of the Rojo gang. The Rojos sell liquor but want to move in on the rest of the shady dealings in town. He’s not a handsome man, but is arguably the friendliest Rojo to “Joe.”

Esteban Rojo: Sieghardt Rupp plays the youngest and most headstrong Rojo. Brash and kind of dumb, Esteban dresses fancier than his brothers, likes pistols, and has a screechy laugh that just makes you want “Joe” to shoot him.

Ramon Rojo: Gian Maria Volonté is the real brains behind the Rojo operation. Brutal and controlling, he’s incredibly clever and a monster to women. Exactly the kind of villain you want to see our hero destroy.

Chico: Mario Brega plays the main Rojo goon. Not much to say about him other than he’s trusted by the gang, is a chubby guy, and shows up on screen a fair amount.

Marisol: Marianne Koch plays “Ramon’s woman” and boy is she unhappy about it. See, Ramon keeps her under guard in a shack outside town and her husband Julio and son Jesus have moved into the shack thirty feet away. At first she’s little more than a pawn for “Joe,” but as the movie progresses (and so does “Joe’s” war on the gangs, he shows her family some genuine kindness. Oh, and her son is dubbed with a really annoying, whiny voice. Yes, I know the little kid’s sad and abused by the bad guys, but he still set my teeth on edge whenever he spoke.

John Baxter: Wolfgang Lukschy is the “sheriff” of town and patriarch of the Baxter family. His gang run and sell guns illegally. Slightly less ruthless than the Rojos, they’re also less interesting, clever, or menacing.

Silvanito the barkeep: Jose Calvo plays one of the few characters who become acquaintances/helpers for “Joe.” Silvanito also provides exposition as needed, in fine Movie bartender tradition. 

The Visuals

Directed by Sergio Leone, the film looks really good in daylight and interior shots. The heavy use of day-for-night though, betrays the film’s lower budget origins. That bit of cost-cutting doesn’t detract from the quality of the rest of the movie. Action sequences are nicely shot (and with great build-up). Leone also uses extreme close ups on faces to good effect as well. Most of these faces are as weathered as the landscape, and Leone really plays up the harshness of the West. Case in point: “Joe” gets the crap beaten out of him something fierce a third of the way through the movie, and it is very effective in its brutality. 

Oh, and this movie totally stole Marty McFly’s gunfight strategy against Mad Dog Tannen in Back to the Future Part III.

The Story

Story by A. Bonzzoni, Víctor Andrés Catena, & Sergio Leone. Screenplay by Víctor Andrés Catena, Jaime Comas, & Sergio Leone. Dialogue by Mark Lowell (and Uncredited: Fernando Di Leo, Duccio Tessari, & Tonino Valerii). Character motivation is quite simple, and most of the cast are painted in broad strokes with a few character traits to define them. The plot is the real focus of the story, with intrigue, betrayal, and manipulation taking center stage (and that’s exactly what “Joe’s” doing). The twists and turns of the story, along with how Joe reacts to them in his game of cat-and-mouse with the gangs is great fun to see play out. 

The Sounds

I've read arguments that Ennio Morricone single-handedly elevated the Man With No Name trilogy to greatness by the awesomeness of his score alone, and there is some credence to that. The variety of moods that Morricone can set with little more than a piano, guitar and a whistle is inhuman. 

The Verdict

A Fistful of Dollars is a damn fine movie and an interesting alternative take on the Western genre. Moody and amoral, its quite a difference from the more forthright heroics of the American-grown Westerns that John Wayne became a fixture of. I hesitate to say Leone made a superior version of the Western (I have good things to say about Stagecoach as well, for instance), but he definitely helped make Spaghetti Westerns a legitimate, and stylish sub-genre. The direction, Eastwood’s intensity, and Morricone's amazing music make this well worth watching. 

“How many preachers you know carry a six-gun?”

Find A Place To Die AKA Joe…cercati un posto per moriere! is a rather somber Spaghetti Western from 1968. It opens with a man and woman defending a mine from bandits, but the man gets caught in an explosion and trapped under some rubble. He gives his wife a bag of gold and tells her to get help and/or start a new life without him. Her name’s Lisa Martin (Pascale Petit) and she at least has the decency to leave her dying husband a Winchester and some whiskey.

After a travel montage (the movie has several) she arrives at a town that translates to “Eagle’s Nest.” It’s a crummy town full of scum and villainy, and a lady of negotiable affection named Juanita is singing the grim theme song. Lisa enters and finds a drunk American wearing gray named Joe Collins (Jeffrey Hunter, who played Captain Pike on the original Star Trek pilot), a disgraced cavalry officer. She eventually convinces him to help her rescue her husband from the gang of Chato (Mario Dardanelli). After a bar brawl, Joe agrees, but needs help fighting Chato’s men. They assemble a motley gang of shady types that include: Gomez (Gianni Pallavicino as Gordon York) a crook who buys guns from Joe and sells them to Chato; Paco (Reza Fazeli), Juanita’s pistol favoring lover/pimp; Fernando (Nello Pazzafini), a big dumb lug of a goon with a sidekick (that he leaves behind) and along the way they pick up the shady Reverend Riley (Adolfo Lastretti) who’s obviously some kind of lecherous con man. Actually, they’re all pretty lecherous and greedy men interested in Lisa’s body and the 2 thousand in gold she’s promised. The band rides out to the mine and toward a violent showdown over the gold with Chato and lots of betrayals along the way.


Visuals/Effects
Giuliano Carnimeo (as A. Ascot) also directed the (arguably better) Sartana films. Still, he’s got a good eye for scenery and mood here. The mood here being “Bleak.” Visually this is a rather stark film right from the beginning, where the camera focuses in on an iguana, which…I don’t think is actually native to the American Southwest. Ah whatever, these movies were all made in Spain anyway. The brawls and shootouts are all solidly done as well. If there’s anything the movie does wrong, is pad out a lot of the plot and action with long montages of people riding places without particular impetus.

Writing
Story by Lamberto Benvenuti and Hugo Fregonese. Screenplay by Lamberto Benvenuti, Giuliano Carnimeo and Hugo Fregonese. I will hand it to this movie, it certainly commits to grimdarkness. The only character who isn’t sullied or bad in some way is Lisa. Chato is a murderous bandit who displays corpses of people he’s killed. Fernando is a brute who doesn’t seem to care about the meaning of the phrase “bad touch.” Gomez is a sneaky, backstabbing bastard. Riley’s skilled in medicine, clearly a false preacher, and apparently very, very good at torturing information out of people. Paco’s loyal to his woman, but he’s still a murderous pimp. Even Joe is tainted because he was court-martialed, is wanted in Texas for killing a man, and in Mexico selling a cache of stolen military guns. From his clothes, he also looks like he was on the losing side of the Civil War too. Like I said, grimdark.

Sound
Original music by Gianni Ferrio, the music’s actually quite good. Lots of haunting acoustic guitar and the “theme song” sung in the bar continues the dark mood since its all about finding a place for a gunfighter to die. Thematically consistent.

Conclusion
There’s not a whole lot to Find A Place To Die. It’s a competent movie that is coherently told and committed to telling a dark tale of frontier greed and betrayal with a few rays of hope scattered throughout. It is grim and violent, and rather mirthless, and slightly dragged down by frequent sequences of people riding. Ultimately a decent movie with a few interesting characters (Joe, Paco, and Riley come to mind). Certainly not essential viewing, but if you’ve got a boxed set like I do, it’s a pleasant little surprise.

“It’s like living with a six year old.”

I don’t know how to preface 1986’s Three Amigos! so I won’t.

Story
The Three Amigos are Lucky Day (Steve Martin), Dusty Bottoms (Chevy Chase) and Ned Nederlander (Martin Short), three big time actors in Hollywood who get a little too big for their pay scale and get fired for demanding too much from their cranky boss (Joe Mantegna and Jon Lovitz & Phil Hartman as his henchmen). Unknown to them, a lovely woman from Santa Poco, Mexico named Carmen (Patrice Martinez) has seen one of their films and thinks they’re real gunfighters. She writes them and invites them to drive off a bandit that’s been terrorizing Santa Poco, and they comply, thinking it’s a paying gig. That soon changes when they run into the murderous El Guapo (Alfonso Arau), his sidekick Jefe (Tony Plana) and their gang.

Visuals/Effects
Directed by John Landis, the movie is both solidly shot and brings a lot of sight gags to the table, both of which are very important to comedy. Of note is the fake Three Amigos movie shown at the beginning, which is shot just like an old silent short.

Writing
Written by Steve Martin, Lorne Michaels & Randy Newman. The beginning is a little slow and a few early jokes miss the mark, but when the movie gets up and running, its great. Martin, Chase and Short are all funny (as expected), but some of the funniest scenes in the movie come from El Guapo’s exchanges with Jefe.

Sound
Original music by Elmer Bernstein and “The Ballad of the Three Amigos” written by Randy Newman (who was also the voice of the Singing Bush). With that kind of pedigree, you better believe the music is excellent.

Conclusion
Yet another movie in the pile of films that Kes loves unabashedly. Three Amigos! makes up for what it lacks in originality (let’s face it, it owes everything to The Magnificent Seven) with bizarre, tongue-in-cheek hilarity.

“Last I heard you were gonna have a talk with some fellas. Next thing I hear one of them's dead.”

Hey look, another Bruce Willis movie. This time starring in an American remake of Kurosawa’s Yojimbo that isn’t A Fistful of Dollars. Well, what it lacks in Sergio Leone, it makes up for in Christopher Walken. Here's 1996's Last Man Standing.

Plot
So it’s a small border town in Texas during the Prohibition. Our hero drives into town and by chance, finds a small gang war going on between Irish and Italian bootleggers and wouldn’t you know? One of the Irish guys pisses him off and there’s a duel. Our hero wins and finds himself stuck in town with two gangs that alternately want to kill him and get him to work for him. Sensing a quick buck, our anti-hero decides to work for both gangs, playing them off each other, until a Texas Ranger comes into town with an ultimatum: in ten days there had better be only one gang in town, otherwise the Rangers will wipe out both of them.

Characters
John Smith: Bruce Willis plays our stone-faced man without a past. He’s headed down to Mexico for reasons unknown, but he seems to be leaving Chicago. A tough guy, he does have a soft spot for women and helps several of them get away from the town throughout the film. I’m not entirely sold on the idea of Bruce Willis, an action guy with comedic charm, channeling Clint Eastwood’s humorless stoicism.

Joe Monday: William Sanderson (a veteran character actor) plays the town bartender and probably the most honest, likable guy in town. He lets Smith rent out a room and becomes a valuable source of information and scuttlebutt.

Sheriff Ed Galt: Bruce Dern (another veteran character actor) plays the town’s crooked sheriff. Kind of a jerk at first, he comes to not-hate Smith eventually since he finds the two gangs outsmarted by one guy somewhat amusing (and with the Rangers breathing down his neck, sees John as a guy who can do the sheriff’s job for him).

Fred Strozzi: Ned Eisenberg plays the head of the Strozzi gang and the first gang to hire Smith. Smith returns the favor by seducing Strozzi’s girl Lucy (Alexandra Powers).

Doyle: David Patrick Kelly plays the head of the Irish gang and he’s a lot more on edge than Strozzi. He’s also really paranoid about people looking at his girl, Felina (Karina Lombard), something Smith capitalizes on.

Hickey: Christopher Walken plays Doyle’s top enforcer, a cold-blooded killer with a nasty reputation, a hoarse voice and an appreciation for the Thompson submachine gun. Hickey is also the only crook who starts to figure out just what Smith is doing, which makes him pretty damn badass.

Captain Tom Pickett: Ken Jenkins plays the Texas Ranger who comes into town with the ultimatum. It’s a one-scene appearance, but come on, it is totally awesome seeing Bob Kelso with a big moustache bossing around Bruce Willis.

Visuals/Effects
Directed by Walter Hill with Lloyd Ahern as director of photography. The movie certainly looks good. Visually, it’s a cross between a Western and a gangster flick, so that’s rather fresh. The action scenes are often brutal and it is quite entertaining watching Mr. Smith gunning down hoods with dual pistols.

Writing
Alright, so the screenplay is by Walter Hill and based on Yojimbo by Akira Kurosawa and Ryûzô Kikushima (which in turn has some similarities to some Dashiell Hammett novels that aren’t The Maltese Falcon or The Thin Man). While this film doesn’t have any glaring plot holes or whatever, it certainly feels a bit on the recycled side, probably because Yojimbo & A Fistful of Dollars are both so very well known. Big shoes to fill and all that. The atmosphere of this film is also surprisingly dark, with a lot of death, destruction and unhappy people. Things get pretty bleak at times.

Sound
The original music by Ry Cooder is…very 90s, and not really in a good way. Eschewing the big orchestral or jazz sounds that you would expect of a movie like this, a lot of synthesized elements dominate the soundtrack. Moody, sure, but kind of an ill fit for this kind of movie.

Conclusion
There’s not much to say about Last Man Standing. It’s all right I suppose. I didn’t regret watching it and there were a few cool action scenes, so it did what it sought out to do. The cast was full “hey it’s that guy” moments and Willis & Walken both did adequately with the material. However, there isn’t a whole lot this movie does that isn’t done better by other films. This is the kind of forgettable movie that goes great with a hangover; interesting enough without having to tax your brain too much. Not really recommended.

“You're just not thinking fourth dimensionally!”

Well, here it is, the finale of the trilogy, 1990s Back to the Future Part III. Following on directly after Part II (since they were filmed together) it wraps up the series, and gives a heaping dose of Wild West ADVENTURE!

Plot
Picking up where we left off in the last film, Marty is currently stuck in 1955 and Doc is in 1885. Marty has to go back there and save Doc’s life, so 50’s Doc sends him back and Marty promptly gets stuck in the Wild West when the DeLorean runs out of gas. So, they’ve gotta figure out a way to get the car up to 88mph before Biff Tannen’s ancestor kills the Doc. The plot is, surprisingly, less complicated than the previous installments.

Characters
Marty McFly: Michael J. Fox one last time, getting to play cowboy. The character’s pretty well defined here and no real surprises. Still doesn’t like being called chicken and still has Flea as Needles, his nemesis (for all of two minutes at the end).

Dr. Emmett Brown: Christopher Lloyd is the star of the show here, no question. He’s set himself up as the town blacksmith and all around awesome guy who’s able to use his secret knowledge from the future to…well, actually just help people out actually. He’s made an enemy of this era’s Tannen though. And in this movie, Doc Brown falls in love. He is quite badass.

Maggie McFly: Lea Thompson as Marty’s ancestor (and his mom, at the end too), she and her husband are new in town.

Seamus McFly: Michael J. Fox is the mustachioed ancestor of Marty who’s married to Maggie. When you think about it, its kind of weird.

Clara Clayton: Mary Steenburgen is a schoolteacher who’s saved from falling into a ravine by Doc, essentially altering history. She & Doc fall in love thanks in part to a mutual appreciation of Jules Verne.

Buford “Mad Dog” Tannen: Thomas F. Wilson is a lot more murderous as a desperado in the Tannen ancestry.

Visuals/Effects
Robert Zemeckis directing and Dean Cundey cinematographing worked twice before and works here too, maintaining the same level of energy and ADVENTURE! the series is known for. It also happens to be a Western (well, an homage) so it touches on a lot of visual nods to standards of the genre. Effects are still solid, especially the end of the movie, which was my very first delicious taste of steampunk. You know what I’m talking about.

Writing
Robert Zemeckis & Bob Gale wrapped up everything quite nicely in this one. Dialog is great, pacing is too and the whole thing is a hell of a lot of fun.

Sound
Alan Silvestri once more brings the awesomeness, merging the iconic “Back to the Future theme” with Western flourishes that just scream ADVENTURE!

“The Power of Love” gets a callback, and ZZ Top contributed a song, “Doubleback”

Conclusion
Okay, so these movies are exemplary of the effects-driven big budget blockbusters that glut our theaters every summer, I will admit that. But there is a major difference. Back to the Future as a whole is really damn good. There’s heart to it, and some great ideas driving the madness forward, and most importantly, these movies are damn fun. These movies were popular for that reason.

And that marks an excellent place to mark my hiatus. Decided by necessity and responsibility rather than a desire to stop updating for the next couple of months. Doesn’t mean I’ll let the cobwebs build up in here though. There will probably be a couple back up features, hopefully a review on a semi-weekly basis, maybe some guest reviews, and some other stuff to try and increase audience numbers and participation.

So, I’d like to thank anyone and everyone who has helped make RMWC Reviews get this far. Honestly, without a lot of the feedback I’ve received from my offline enablers, this thing wouldn’t have made it past twenty.

“I know what you're thinking, he's old and decrepit, gums his food AND his women…but he can still shoot straight.”

Haven’t done any Westerns here at RMWC yet, and I think it’s a genre that I’ve been criminally underrating. After all, cowboys stand among the iconic film archetypes, standing up for justice and truth in a lawless land. 1994’s Maverick doesn’t actually feature those kinds of cowboys. Actually, nobody’s really honest in Richard Donner’s adaptation of the classic TV series, but then again, would you expect a movie about a Wild West card shark to be straightforward?

Plot
Our hero, a poker playing magnificent bastard has two goals in life. First, he wants to make a lot of money. Second, he wants to not die. He’s something of a coward, and really more of a scam artists than an adventurer, but his goal is to make it to “The Big Game,” where a hefty prize goes to the winner. Along they way he meets his female match and a lawman who doesn’t approve of his cowardly, shystering ways. ADVENTURE! and hilarity ensues for 127 minutes.

Characters
Bret Maverick: Mel Gibson is your smiling, cowardly, contingency planning frontier conman, and he’s a magnificent bastard. Like a good poker player, he never shows his full hand and always hides his tells, but I can’t really go further into his character because…well, spoilers. Needless to say, he’s this movie’s Badass for always figuring out a way.

Annabelle Bransford: Jodie Foster is the romantic foil for Maverick, a sassy, resourceful thief and con woman who’s not bad at poker, either. She and Gibson have good chemistry as they bicker on screen.

Marshal Zane Cooper: Veteran actor James Garner (who was the original Maverick on the TV series) plays a straight laced lawman who eventually crosses paths with Maverick and Annabelle before becoming the enforcer of fair play at the Big Game.

Joseph: Graham Greene (who was Edgar Montrose on Red Green) is an Indian chief whom the heroes come across in a tense moment. Well, tense until Maverick strikes up a conversation with him in his language and reveals that A) they’re old friends, and B) Maverick’s going to leave those saps behind and hang out with his Indian buddy. What follows is, well, it’s a digression that serves the plot by getting Maverick some money to enter the tournament, but mostly its an excuse for an interlude of undiluted hilarity as Maverick & Joseph con a Russian Archduke into “killing an Indian” (Maverick in disguise).

Angel: It took me a while to realize that Maverick’s rival/enemy was Alfred Molina, but yeah he’s the Bad Guy of the movie. A pretty ruthless thug and violent to boot, he does not take getting embarrassed by Maverick very well.

Commodore Duvall: The late, great Western actor James Coburn as the man hosting the Big Game on a riverboat. He doesn’t do a whole lot, but he’s still awesome.

Danny Glover’s also got a cameo in this movie as a bank robber who runs into Maverick’s character during a heist. As Glover’s gang escape town, he grunts the immortal line “I’m getting too old for this shit.” It’s a great little moment. Quite a few other big names have cameo roles, from Margot Kidder to Reba McEntire, John Fogerty, Waylon Jennings, Corey Feldman and Clint Black (yes, I had to look that up, I’m not THAT good at spotting cameos).

Visuals/Effects
Richard Donner. Get used to that name, because there are a lot of movies coming down the RMWC pike that will have his name attached. Anywho, Donner does a great job of using the American Southwest’s natural beauty to frame shots, convey mood and keep the pacing quick and light. Action scenes are generally lighthearted, but quite fun. I should mention the pacing once more. The entire movie is very episodic, with transitional elements, but generally you can easily divide parts of it up into: Maverick’s introduction, Maverick on the Stagecoach and fighting Bandits, Maverick & Joseph scam a Russian, Maverick’s brush with death, Maverick at the Big Game, Maverick and the End of the Movie. That’s a lot of segments, and it’s a credit to the filmmakers that the movie has all of that and still clips forward at an impressive speed.

WritingRoy Huggins created the original character of Maverick and William Goldman (the guy who, among a bevy of other things, wrote the Princess freakin’ awesome Bride) wrote the movie script. Dialog is sharp, witty and the plot is full of insane twists as various characters scheme to screw other characters over. It turns out that everybody’s crooked, but even then, the end of the movie has a killer payoff of magnificent bastardy that needs to be seen. Great stuff.

Sound
Randy Newman, better known as the singer/songwriter who made “Short People” and “You’ve Got A Friend In Me,” delivers a great Wild West soundtrack. The licensed songs by Country artists are also appropriate.

Conclusion
Maverick is a great film. It takes action, slapstick, wordplay, plot twists and a spirit of ADVENTURE! and makes an awesome movie that’s sadly underrated. As far as movies adapted from a popular television show, this is really how things should be handled. Absolutely recommended.