5/10
Not the classic I had hoped it would be
28 February 2010
I'm a big fan of Sphagetti Westerns but for some reason I didn't watch this until today. Lee Van Cleef is always a joy to watch. One of the greatest western star(no matter nationality) and he keeps it up in this one too. However the rest of the cast, safe a few bad guys, does a pretty poor job. I mean seriously, any chance of John Phillip Law being Steven Seagals father, lol. Same face through the whole damn thing.

I hadn't seen anything from Giulio Petroni before so I had no idea what to expect. I must say I'm not likely to check out any of his other films. He takes the simplest, most cliché shots and manages to even screw up some of them. The films look is just completely unspectacular and far below average. Of course this can be blamed on camera men, the editing room, etc. but it's still the directors job to make sure everything turns out alright.

Now it wasn't horrible. Far from it, pretty OK actually. It's a pretty cool and entertaining, less than I had hoped for, but still very enjoyable. Sadly the poor direction is not the only problem, the films plot and dialog just yells simplicity and thoughtlessness. Silly one-liners and everything falls into place perfectly.

I watched the English version (mainly because the Italian one doesn't appear to exist) and the dubbing was pretty darn weak. There's even scenes were people are "talking" without moving their lips. I'm not sure how much this is a fault of the actual film as every film should be viewed in it's original language. And though this is partly American it is possible that the Italians but more work into their sound. If you are a Spaghetti fan you will probably check it out, but I wouldn't recommend it to people who aren't familiar with the genre.
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