Year Of The Western! #16 The Mercenary (1968)

And here is the palate cleanser after The Great Silence. Phew, I was worried I was going to be stuck down that sad dark wintery hole for a while.

I made another slight error in trying to review these films in their release order. This one came out a month or so before The Great Silence (in Italy anyways... it is hard to pin down exact release dates for some of these as they opened in different markets at different times. Some of these didn't make it to the US until a year later). I am okay with this after discovering my error. I think the lighter tone and romp that is The Mercenary arrived just on time.  

Film #16 The Mercenary (1968) 

Here is the imdb.com cast listing. Here is the wikipedia page about the production.

The plot on this one is a little odd and I will admit that I had some difficulty keeping all the pieces in place, but I will try to stick to the basics. The film starts off with a circus performance/comedy rodeo (?) where Sergei Kowalski (Franco Nero) sees the main clown/actor as someone he knew from before. The film then flashes back to that person, named Paco Roman (Tony Musante), who is border line slave labor at a silver mine. He and his fellow works stand up to the boss and humiliate him in front of everyone. Paco is sent to be executed, but his friends save him and they run off. 

Sergei is a mercenary and is hired by the owners of the silver mine to go and make sure the shipments get to the United States as there are now rebels blocking the path. Sergei goes to the mine, sees the leadership there has been killed by the rebels lead by Paco. Sergei, finding out that the pathway to the mine has been destroyed, sees that there is no job for him and decides to leave. Just then, the owners show up with the army to fight the rebels. Desperate, Paco pays Sergei to fight for him and his men. 

Sergei asks what Paco wants, he says he wants revolution but can't really describe what that means. Sergei tells him as long as he gets paid first, with gold not paper money, he will help get Paco his revolution.

Meanwhile, Sergei has a rival named Curly (Jack Palance), that is seeking revenge against Sergei and Paco for humiliating him earlier. 

The film then follows the story of Paco's revolution and how successful and unsuccessful it was and how he ended up as a clown in the arena. 

What I just said doesn't feel quite right and I might have gotten some of the details incorrect but it boils down to a hired gun who knows he can keep getting paid (and keeps raising the price) and a revolutionary that is enjoying the spoils of power but maybe not the responsibility of it.

This is a mix of western and comedy that works more than it fails. It does't have the silly music cues like the 1950's American westerns to let you know that this scene is the funny one. The humor is through out. Sergei confronts a man cheating at Craps with loaded dice (they always come up 7) and as he is confirming his suspicions, Sergei keeps rolling the dice without looking and they keep hitting 7. Later, Curly tosses those same dice at Sergei while confronting him about one thing or another and they roll to a 7 in the dirt by Sergei's head. It was a quick blink and you will miss it moment, but it was well done. 

Sergei also has a knack for lighting a quick strike match off of any surface, people's cheeks, their teeth, a bottom of a foot, even a lady's cleavage. Over time, this bit got funnier and funnier due to how silly it got. The trailer above thankfully shows some of these skills off.

Sergei's demands keep getting more and more ridiculous. He has everyone stop in the desert and empty their water bottles into a large barrel so they can suspend it over his head. He shoots through the bottom to make it into a makeshift shower and he takes his time cooling off. He knows he can get away with this too as he made Paco sign a contract stating as such. So he keeps pushing and Paco keeps giving in. 

My favorite part of these moments is another super fast bit. Paco's men are on horseback riding through a river that is coming up to the middle of their horses' bodies and off to the right we see a large wooden raft with Sergei's horse standing on it, with him on top of it. Even his horse has special privileges.  

You can tell Franco Nero is having a lot of fun playing the character that's always a step ahead, is kind of jerk to everyone, but is still so cool you want to see what he does or says next. Also, he may have the prettiest eyes in all of westerns. He is a charming figure that carries this film comedically, but you don't question his badassness when he is using various machine guns in the film.

Tony Musante as Paco Roman felt very much like a younger and less capable Tuco to me, and that's not an insult. The character wants to feel big and important and is larger than life when things are going his way but he falls apart at the first sign of complication. He also has a few funny moments, especially during a fist fight between Paco and Sergei. Paco gets knocked into a hen house and as he stands up to keep fighting, he pulls a chicken out of his shirt, and tries to hit Sergei with it.

I wish they would have given Jack Palance more to do in the film. After seeing how scary he could be in Shane, I knew he can play a great bad guy... which he is here, but there really doesn't seem to be a lot going on motivation-wise for him other than he hates the other two leads. He does get to stick an active grenade into someone's mouth though, so there's that. 

Tonally, the film is an odd duck. It looks like there was a trend of comedic Spaghetti Westerns that starting coming out and having success, so finding the balance of the drama/action and comedy in a film and still making it cohesive must have been difficult. You dial it too far one way and you have a generic film about revolutionaries and the companies/government trying to stop them with mercenaries making the money in between, and you dial it to far the other way, you would get something ridiculous that has no gravity to it whatsoever. The Mercenary tries to walk that line and it does an okay job of it. This film is not to be taken as seriously other westerns, and it knows it. 

One of the last scenes in the film (spoiler, you have been warned) takes place at the arena where the movie started. Curly has found Paco (still in his rodeo clown make up) and is going to kill him. Sergei intervenes and then a duel takes place. The scene is played vary seriously, which makes Paco's make up all the sillier. And when you see how the duel ends, it is a very dark pratical joke. 

Palance's reaction to the outcome, and then to the real outcome, is great. The three mean in a ring does remind me very much so of the end of The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, and I wonder if it was kind of poking fun at that. Bonus points for Paco being dressed as a Fool, Curly dressed for his own funeral, Sergei dressed like a tourist. 

I am appreciating that Sergio Corbucci (director of D'Jango, The Hellbenders, and The Great Silence) doesn't stick to the same tricks in the large genre sandbox that is the western. I have seen four of his films that are very different from each other in tone, look, and execution. It was fun to watch him lean into comedy on this one after the other three (that I have seen, he has 64 directing credits on Imdb.com) were a lot more serious in tone. You almost get an Indiana Jones feel from how the scenes can switch from somewhat dramatic, to comedic, and yet the action stays top notch. 

The score again was done by Ennio Morricone. You will see the obligatory link to it below. 

The Mercenary is a fun breezy film. I can see this playing in the background of a lazy weekend day as you work on a birdhouse or plot your own revolution against your neighbor, (Gary, the tyranny of you taking up the shared driveway ends now!). You would look up at it for a moment or two, smile at it, and then get back to work. There are worse ways to spend your weekend.

Western Checklist (nowhere near official or scientific):

• Weird gang member names? Sergei has a nickname, one that I am not going to type here. 1968 was a different time. 
• Beautiful landscapes? Nothing that really stands out to me. The wholesale destruction of a town near the end of the film was a sight to behold, though.
• Any terrified horses? Yes. Too many. Also, a pigeon coup got thrown at one point and I felt bad for those birds. Oh, Franco Nero punches a donkey. Hard.
• How many Ernest Borgnines? I am going with Jack Palance here. He was named Curly for goodness sake. That was the same name of his character in City Slickers. How can you not overlook that?
• Does it have a theme song with the name of the film in the title? No, but again, another interesting score from Ennio Morricone. This one is as tonally all over the place as the rest of the film is. Its not bad, just really upbeat and fun in parts, and then very grand in others. I liked it but it didn't feel as an altogether complete piece like others that I have heard so far.  

Rating:

I am going to give this 3 out of 5 tin stars. A fun film with some good comedy in it, but it felt like there was something off about it the entire time. The end of the film sums it up nicely. The title card is in italian and said 'Fine.' I know it means End, but Fine is as good as word as any to describe The Mercenary.