Il mercenario aka The Mercenary/A Professional Gun (1968)

[cigar joe]

Here is how I rate thoes I've seen.

Minnesota Clay-  not seen
Johnny Oro-  not seen
Django-*** out of 5
Navajo Joe-** out of 5
Hellbenders-**** out of 5
The Great Silence-***** out of 5
The Mercenary-***** out of 5
Companeros-****1/2 out of 5
The Specialist-** out of 5
Sonny and Jed-  not seen
What am I doing in the middle of the revolution?-  not seen

[cigar joe]

In case anybody's interested on Corbucci's take on a corrida duel between Franco Nero, Jack Palance, and Tony Musante, check out this youtube snippet (it's in Italian though)

La Arena:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=8PykHgkq8-Q&feature=related

[Ben Tyreen]

 I posted this in the TCM schedule update yesterday, but in case people don't see that one, here it is again.

1:00am  Mercenary, The (1968)   
An idealistic patriot hires a gunman to lead the fight against a crooked mine-owner.
Cast: Jack Pallance, Franco Nero, Tony Musante. Dir: Sergio Corbucci. C-106 mins, TV-14 

And it's being shown in the all-important LETTERBOX!

[cigar joe]

deinitely don't miss this one the DVDr I have is excellent

[cigar joe]

A review from our buddy Kermit.

Mercenary has lots of cynical comedy. as gung ho spaghetti western. Nero's in it for the money. Paco for Paco for the righteousness like in clint and col. Mortimer. Music fits perfectly with the movie. Jack "Curley" Palance just might be a lil gay, lol.

Corbucci really likes explotions,.lol

Nero and machine gun go together like noodles and spaghetti sause, lol
solid protagenious, creepy bad guy, a classic. although , at times Corbucci comes close he maintains his own idenity.
Not chalenging leone but offering us a different slant. very different, lol

[Novecento]

A snippet from Arizona Colt

... The film was widescreen and in italian with subs. I'm assuming it's complete although the castration scene is not shown only the man being dragged away and screaming.

Alex Cox mentions that Marco Giusti claims to have seen this scene but that it was omitted from the International print; it is certainly not included on my Japanese R2 release which I had thought was complete.

[stanton]

I doubt that this scene was ever included in any theatrical version.

The Japanese disc is believed to be uncut.

The Koch Media DVD is announced for fall.

[Dust Devil]

Il mercenario (1968) - 8/10

Still great. Sits right after Leone's SWs and Il grande silenzio.

[Groggy]

Pretty good film. Storywise a very typical Zapata plot but very well-executed, with good shootouts/battle scenes and a lot of neat style flourishes by Corbucci. I thought Palance was rather underused though. 7-ish/10

[Groggy]

Da Grog Blog, he say:

A Professional Gun (aka The Mercenary) is a fairly subdued film by Corbucci's usual standards; compared to the comic book grotesquery of Django (1966) and sadistic nihilism of The Great Silence (1968) it's downright subtle. It's a colorful, action-filled "Zapata Western" with little original in the way of plot or characterization, but the execution makes it an entertaining film.

Mexico is on the verge of revolution, and a group of silver miners revolt against their oppressive overseers. The desperate mine bosses hire Sergei Kowalski (Franco Nero), a Polish gun-for-hire, to transport silver north to America, but Kowalski finds himself reluctantly siding with the miners, led by Paco (Tony Musante). Local tough Curly (Jack Palance) and his gang of henchmen team up with Federales to try and kill Paco, who has gone from uneducated peasant to revolutionary hero; but even as the final showdown nears, Kowalski's loyalty is always in question.

Take an ignorant Mexican peon, a shady foreign mercenary with ulterior motives, throw them in the middle of the Mexican Revolution of 1913, let the sparks, bullets and double-crosses fly, and you've got the model for the so-called "Zapata Western". Damiano Damiani's atrocious A Bullet for the General (1966), inexplicably considered among the genre's best works, was the main basis for this subgenre; as most early Spaghettis shamelessly plagarized Leone's A Fistful of Dollars (1964), so filmmakers flocked to Damiani's banner, mixing bloody mayhem with sophomoric left-wing politics ("Divide the bread equally!") in a series of derivative films. Leone himself would critique this sub-subgenre pointedly in Duck, You Sucker!, mocking the sophomoric Marxism which pervaded these films with a nihilistic depiction of Revolution. In A Professional Gun, however, the politics aren't what matters; the movie's primary goal is blood-splattered, shoot-'em-up entertainment. On this level, Corbucci undoubtedly delivers.

The movie's plot is pretty much standard Zapata fare, but Corbucci executes it with breezy, stylish confidence. The movie has the usual broadly drawn characters, head-turning betrayals and paper-thin plot inimical to the genre. As usual, modern technology - machine-guns, airplanes, artillery - are used to ratchet up the body count to Sam Peckinpah levels. Such politics as the film displays aren't really worth discussion; it's crude Marxism at its most basic. One shouldn't come to this film for an insightful political polemic, but rather a lot of fast-paced shoot-'em-ups.

Corbucci handles the action scenes with his usual flare, and fills the film with his usual grotesque touches: people eating live lizards and a pair of dice, a pitchfork murder, a duel in a bullfighting arena, a carnation spurting blood. Ennio Morricone contributes a lively Mexican-flavored score - not his best work, but memorable nonetheless. The cast is pretty good: Franco Nero is at his stoic best, and Tony Musante does a nice job with the layered character of Paco. Jack Palance is flamboyantly over-the-top as the villainous Curly, though he suffers from relative lack of screen time. Giovanna Ralli is fiery and gorgeous as Paco's love interest.

A Professional Gun is an entertaining, colorful Western that's certainly worth a look. Like most Spaghettis though, it's lacking that special something to make it a truly great film.

http://nothingiswrittenfilm.blogspot.com/2009/09/spaghetti-western-double-shot.html

[Novecento]

New French release with English audio: http://testdvd.westernmovies.fr/testdvd.php?i=183

[cigar joe]

Da Grog Blog, he say:

http://nothingiswrittenfilm.blogspot.com/2009/09/spaghetti-western-double-shot.html

You didn't mention the soundtrack. You also should give it a proper screening at least on a wide screen TV rather than on Youtube.

[Groggy]

Ennio Morricone contributes a lively Mexican-flavored score - not his best work, but memorable nonetheless.

 

I watched Face to Face on YouTube, not APG.

[cigar joe]

Sorry didn't see it, I stand corrected,  it but of all the Morricone scores this one is one of the few that is akin to OUTITW in that contains leitmotifs for each character ( Sollima's Run Man Run also does) there may be another but I can't recall it off the top of my head.

[Groggy]

I liked the whistling theme for Kowalski but the rest of the score was good if unremarkable.