And on the heels of a comedy western, we get... another comedy western! This one is a little different than Companeros and The Mercenary. It does speaks to how you can find different areas to explore even within a sub genre like this.
It is also worth noting that this film did really well financially and spawned a few Trinity sequels and some films being renamed with Trinity in the title in much the same way Django was applied to a lot of unrelated films. It is interesting to see what struck a chord and how it changed the films being made around it.
Let's hop on the travois and see where They Call Me Trinity takes us.
Film #23 They Call Me Trinity (1970)
Here is the imdb.com cast listing. Here is the wikipedia page about the production.
The film starts off with us meeting Trinity (Terence Hill), a dust covered gunfighter who is being dragged behind his horse on a travois. The horse seems to know where it is going because as soon as it gets to a way station, it stops and lets Trinity know they are there. He sits down at the way station and eats the largest pan of beans ever and takes an injured Mexican man from two bounty hunters. They challenge him and he easily shoots them before they can even fire their guns.
Trinity takes the bounty with him to the nearest town and finds that the sheriff is actually his brother, Bambino (Bud Spencer). Turns out that Bambino actually escaped from prison and while on the run, came across the actual sheriff who was on his way to the town to take the post. Bambino shot him, believing to have killed him, and posed as the new sheriff while he waits for the other two men in his posse to escape and join up with him.
Bambino is actually trying to keep the peace as he knows that if any higher ups come to town, they will realize he isn't actually who he says he is. So he is working for the law while secretly breaking it.
To cloud matters further, a rich horse baron, Major Harriman (Farley Granger), is trying to run out a settlement of mormons who have taken some land to use in the nearby valley. Harriman wants them out so that his large number of horses can graze there. Additionally, there is a band of Mexican bandits led by a man named Mezcal, who are also terrorizing the mormon settlers.
Bambino reluctantly lets Trinity join him as a deputy but tells him to not make any trouble. Trinity smiles and proceeds to always find trouble. Along the way, he falls for a couple of mormon women and decides that they should help them fight back against Harriman and Mezcal.
They Call Me Trinity has an interesting set up for a straight ahead western, bad guys posing as the law and still doing what is right when the time comes, but sprinkle in the comedy that this film pulls off with ease, and you get something special.
The interplay between Trinity and his brother Bambino is what carries the film. The chemistry between Terence Hill and Bud Spencer is clear and they feed off of each other, with Trinity being the instigator and Bambino being the closer. He is the little brother picking fights and knowing that his older brother has to finish them. Not that Trinity can't hold his own, mind you, he makes quick draws and shots that would make Sabata do a double take. I think he just likes watching his brother's resigned frustration when people won't back down and Bambino has to knock them out with a single slap or a hammer punch to the top of the head.
The physical comedy in this film is different than in Companeros and The Mercenary. Those films had a couple of good sight gags and running jokes, but the comedy in They Call Me Trinity has a couple of different levels.
First, Terence Hill's 'ain't that something' smile takes a regular interaction and turns into something funny. He seems to be amused by the world around him a lot of the time. He also has a good way of playing it absurdly straight. In the beginning of the film, when the bounty hunters are trying to figure out who he is, one of them grabs him by the chin while he is eating beans, and turns his face towards the other who is looking through the wanted signs. Terence Hill just keeps slightly open mouthed chewing his food without a care in the world. This is a man covered in dust wearing a shirt that has more holes than shirt, what are you going to do to him that would ruin his day?
Second, Bud Spencer's physical presence makes him a mountain compared to those around him. He was easily picking people up like they were luggage and throwing them around. I had to read up on him to see if he had been a professional wrestler because that is the way he carried himself during fights. People would slap him and he wouldn't even flinch, he would slap people and they would collapse into a heap. He throws people and they end up draped over structures like laundry out to dry. But he didn't really want to fight. It seemed like it was almost a waste of energy because he knew he would win, so why bother?
Third, the absurdity of everyone else. Major Harriman is a rich greedy asshole that he is one pencil thin twirled mustache away from being a cartoon villain (he specifically says he hates children just to drive his assholeness home). Mezcal and his men are so stereotypical Mexican bandits that every time they show up on screen, they have their own horn driven theme music. When Harriman is offering 20 horses to Mezcal to help him get rid of the bothers and the mormons, Mezcal says he would not take the payment of 20 horses, but that he would steal 20 horses from Harriman as stealing is better. The mormons are pacifists right until their leader happens to read the passage from Ecclesiastes about a time for everything, even a time of fighting. Then driven by the will of god, they find it very easy to start throwing punches.
The last 15 minutes of this film remind me more of Slap Shot than a western and I didn't see that coming. There is a very large brawl involving all parties and it goes for so long that is threatens to stop being funny but keeps up the fun till the end. At one point there is a shot of an open window with men being thrown out of it, one after another after another after another, that you begin to wonder if they were going throw every person on set out of it. Mezcal keeps getting combo punched by Bambino but he keeps coming back and trying again and each time it gets a little funnier.
Here is that final brawl if you are inclined to watch it. So many kicks!
It is easy to see why this film was popular at the time and why it still is. It is a lot of fun and Terence Hill and Bud Spencer are awesome together. Finding out that this film set them on a path of starring along side each other for a lot of other films makes sense. They are good together and I really believe that if they didn't have that charisma together, this film wouldn't have been nearly as fun.
Because I would be remiss if I didn't mention it but the score for this film is just as fun and lighthearted as the rest of the film is and I can't recommend it enough. It sets the tone from the start and it is great to hear a different take on what a Spaghetti Western theme could sound like from someone that is not Morricone.
They Call Me Trinity is a fun film and highly entertaining. Trinity is no Man With No Name but he is a Man With No Cares and I don't think I would have it any other way.
Western Checklist (nowhere near official or scientific):
Weird gang member names? Trinity is a bad ass name. Bambino is an odd one and makes me think of Babe Ruth.
Beautiful landscapes? Yes. I believe the valley where the mormon settlement was located was the same valley used at the start of The Hills Run Red. Very unique terrain.
Any terrified horses? Not really. I think the animals were relatively safe in this film.
How many Ernest Borgnines? None, but Bud Spencer looked familiar to me and I found out why. He was Aladin (that's how the movie is spelled) in a very questionable quality film in the 80's I saw while I was growing up. Here is the trailer (Its in Italian but it is worth the watch).
Does it have a theme song with the name of the title in the film? No, but it does have a song with lyrics about the film. It is great. Check it out below along with some of the film's score.
Rating:
I am going to give this film 4 out of 5 tin stars. It is a lot of fun and Terence Hill and Bud Spencer make for a great duo. The humor holds up and the ending is almost as silly as Blazing Saddles. Almost.
So you will notice that this film came out a year before El Topo. I had to make a executive decision at the last moment because Companeros was harder to find than I thought it would be. Also, it doesn't help that the word Companeros is a fairly common Spanish word so any search for it brought up pretty much everything that was not this film.
Either way, I am glad that I watched this after the incredibly challenging El Topo. Sometimes you need a soft landing after an incredibly hard fall. Much like The Mercenary coming right on the heels of The Great Silence, this film was a nice palate cleanser.
Film #22 Companeros
Here is the imdb.com cast listing. Here is the wikipedia page about the production (again, not much).
The film starts off with a lady, Lola (Iris Berben), running through a small Mexican town searching for someone. She finds who she is looking for, El Vasco (Thomas Milian, from Django Kill... If You Live, Shoot!) facing off against Yodlaf Peterson (Franco Nero) in what appears to be a traditional final showdown between two foes. The film then goes back to where the story started.
El Vasco is shining the boots of the local army Colonel in charge. The townsfolk are serving the army like they were servants. The Colonel insults El Vasco, and he stands up and stabs the Colonel. Within moments, the townsfolk revolt and overtake the army. Seconds later, Mongo, a self appointed General, comes in and tells the townsfolk he is the new leader. He sits down and El Vasco starts shining his boots. Mongo then makes him the part of his group and gives him an instant promotion.
I just want to point out that the sudden revolt and change of power is actually quite funny. El Vasco is confused as to what just happened and Thomas Milian's face as he sits back down to shine Mongo's boots is great. From the start you know that this film is not going to take itself too seriously.
Shortly after this, Yodlaf, who is Swedish and free to travel about the country as an ambassador, shows up to town with a train car full of explosives and guns intended for Mongo. Yodlaf is dressed in a nice vest and coat and from the moment El Vasco sees him, he calls him Penguin. The Penguin makes El Vasco look like a fool in front of his men and so begins their love/hate relationship.
Mongo tells the Penguin that he does have the money to pay for the guns but it is in a safe they can't open but they know who can. There is a professor that knows the combination who is in opposition to Mongo (and is leading a counter revolution with college students and Lola) and is currently being held captive by the US Army across the border. Mongo convinces the Penguin and El Vasco to team up together to retrieve the professor so that they can open the safe and the Penguin can get his money and Mongo can get his guns.
Meanwhile, an old associate of the Penguin's, an American named John (Jack Palance) is seeking to even the score as Yodlaf left John crucified in Cuba and the only way he escaped is because his pet falcon, Marsha, ate his hand and freed him. He now has a wooden hand, a bird that likes human flesh, and a very good reason for revenge.
So that's the basic starting point. Throughout the film, the forced relationship between El Vasco and the Penguin is the focal point, with each one having the opportunity to abandon the other and come to their rescue. They do need each other, but they don't mind if the other is left in a compromising situation for a while longer than they have to be. It is where the bulk of the comedy comes from and it is wonderful.
The Mercenary, also directed by Sergio Corbucci, was a 50/50 western and comedy, so there are moments in that film that feel like it is trying to be taken seriously. Companeros feels more 25/75 with more direct focus on comedy. Not every scene is slapsticky but you get Franco Nero smiling with some great one liners in a lot of them. As much as The Mercenary felt like a easy breezy watch, Companeros is even more breezy. This is not a bad thing.
So far from binge watching of westerns, it is evident that a good western doesn't always have a be super serious or dour affair. I will say that my own personal taste that is developing in regards to the genre leans that way more often than not, but that doesn't mean I can't appreciate and enjoy what a lighter, but still very well put together film Companeros is.
There are various scenes, like when the local army comes across Yodlaf and El Vasco and Yodlaf tells them that El Vasco is his servant, Thomas Milian's frustrated face sells the moment. When the army says they need to take a photograph of him as he is undocumented, he doesn't understand what taking a photograph is and when they shine light in his face to take the photo, he just shoots everyone. In another film, this would be monstrous, here it is a punch line to the joke that they were going to shoot him (as in a photo) but he shot them first (with a gun). I was entertained.
Later, when Yodlaf ends up in a noose, standing on a barrel on its rounded side trying to keep balance and alive, El Vasco climbs the water tower to free him but then says he has vertigo and can't climb across and cut the rope. Nero's panicked face is great and the bit works.
There was a moment where El Vasco was caught by John, and while stretched out on a rock, they tie a basket with a hungry rat in it to his torso, knowing that it will eventually burrow itself into his body. Yodlaf, in the distance, hearing initial crazy laughter (as the rat is tickling him inadvertently before burrowing) says to another person, 'Oh that's crazy Vasco having one of his laughing fits' 'All by himself?' 'He gets them often.' Nero's nonchalant line delivery is actually very funny. Don't worry, Yodlaf does go back and save Vasco. He isn't heartless.
There are plenty of moments like this that pepper the journey to free the professor and to get him back across the border. It makes for an entertaining ride.
Companeros does tread similar ground that The Mercenary did in the way that Nero's character is involved just for the money at the start of the story but ends up getting mixed up in the Mexican Revolution. It also makes similar commentary about how both sides say they want the same thing but in reality they just want control. 'We fight for the cause of liberty and justice!,' Lola tells Yodlaf. 'I've heard those words in every country where I've sold guns.' That line would have been right at home in the Mercenary.
Nero's Yodlaf/Penguin is great. He carries such a confident swagger and easy charm that you just know he is going to come out on top somehow. I could watch a series of films with this character always getting in over his head for want of money and see how clever and lucky he gets along the way. He even gets to pull a match lighting gag similar to The Mercenary.
Thomas Milian as El Vasco is wonderfully rough and tumble. He is the perfect Daffy Duck to Nero's Bugs Bunny. I have mentioned a few times how he has great facial reactions to some of the situations that he is in and it just shows how good his sense of comedy and timing was. He plays the character with a head full of steam, making decisions because of emotion and not because of thinking and it makes for some fun moments in the film. His performance was a welcome surprise.
Jack Palance as John is just weirdly great. I also want to see a film with him traveling the west with a wooden hand and Marsha by his side, settling scores and smoking thin cigarettes. Palance plays him with an accent (Irish it sounds like, but I am not sure) and a very laid back line delivery that is very different and trippy. He was great and I would recommend that everyone give this film a shot for his portions alone.
This is the fourth Corbucci film I have watched on this list (and fifth overall) and I have to say that I respect his flexibility within the genre. It would be easy to make the same stylistic choices over and over again, but each one of his films have felt different enough from each other that you can see that he was making an effort to have them stand on their own. Granted, this film doesn't hew too far away from The Mercenary but its commitment to a lighter tone is what separates the two. I don't think one takes away from the other. They are good complimentary films to set side by side.
I normally try to show a scene that I feel is a good snippet of what the film is like and this one was just hard to find any thing outside of the trailer. So here is a video that someone did compiling all the kills that Neoro and Millan had over the course of Companeros. It at least shows some of the fun action sequences.
Before we get to the very end here, I do want to mention the main theme to the film. You hear it in the trailer and that above video and it starts the film off and comes back multiple times. It is fun and upbeat but I will say that I feel it was used a bit too much to let the audience know 'this is a comedy!' and it stepped on the rest of the score. The whole thing was done by Morricone and it is great but I don't know if this is one that I would come back to over and over again like some of the others I have been listening to since watching them for this list. However, I will take slightly forgettable Morricone over a lot of other scores any day of the week.
Companeros is a fun film. I will give it the slight edge over The Mercenary because I enjoy Nero's and Palance's characters more in this one. Also, it has a falcon named Marsha. That makes it better than a majority of films.
Western Checklist (nowhere near official of scientific):
Weird gang member names? Well, there is a Penguin. So that works.
Beautiful landscapes? Yeah, it wasn't the focal point of the film but the Italian desert is pretty.
Any terrified horses? Yeah. That bridge explosion in the clip above looked pretty rough on the horses. Also, Marsha was probably upset when they had her wrapped in a coat at one point.
How many Ernest Borgnines? I will give this to Jack Palance again like I did with The Mercenary.
Any coffins or machine guns? Corbucci can't not have a coffin and a machine gun wielded by Nero in his films. They are both represented here and I dug it.
Does it have a theme song with the name of the film in the title? Yes, it is does and you can here it in both the trailer and other video above. I decided instead of adding it a third time that I would link to a Morricone playlist of other pieces from Companeros. Like I said, it is fine but there aren't many parts of this score I would come back to for the relisten.
Rating:
I am going to give this 3.5 our of 5 tin stars. Companeros is a fun film from beginning to end with very likable performances from Franco Nero, Thomas Milian, and Jack Palance. This is a perfect Sunday afternoon couch crashing watch. Just sit back and enjoy the ride.
Challenging your expectations and your boundaries can be a good thing. I will never regret taking the time to try and experience something I am not familiar with. I would rather know I took the time with a piece of art that I ended up not understanding or liking rather than the possibility that there are works out that would set my brain and my spirit on fire and I just chose not to bother with them.
So I do not regret experiencing El Topo. I just am not sure of what I just watched and how I will truly feel about it later.
Film #21 El Topo (1971)
Never has trailer explained exactly how I feel and don't feel at the same time.
As I feel that this post is going to be way different than the other 20 I have completed before, I am going to change the format up a little bit.
Here is the wikipedia page about the film. Here is Roger Ebert's review when then film was released on DVD in 2007. I would suggest reading his review, he captures the essence better than I feel that I am about to.
The film feels like it is broken into three distinct segments. The first is of El Topo (the writer and director himself), while taking his naked son out to the dessert to have him bury a picture of his mother and a toy 'so as he is now a man.' Afterwards, they encounter a town that has been absolutely slaughtered. Every man, woman, and child has been killed horribly. He finds out that the Colonel and his men are responsible. El Topo finds the Colonel and confronts him and humiliates him in front of his men (he cuts his dick off) and the Colonel kills himself. A woman who was forced to serve the Colonel wants to run away with El Topo, but his child gets in the way of them. So he leaves the child with some friars.
Second, the woman and El Topo wander the desert where she tells him there are four gun masters that he must find and kill if he is to be considered the greatest. He finds them, each representing a different philosophy or religion. He defeats them with luck or trickery. Along the way another woman joins El Topo and the original woman. She is dressed in black similar to him and starts tempting the other woman away from him. After completing his task, he has doubts and feels abandoned by God. The black clad woman makes the other woman make a choice and hands her a gun. She shoots El Topo and they leave him to die. A group of physically deformed people find him and take him away.
Thirdly, El Topo awakes from what is a years long meditation in a cave under a mountain and the same deformed people believe he is their savoir. After a drug fueled 'rebirth' he believes he can get out of the cave (the only opening is high up and as the people are deformed or mentally handicapped, they are not able to make it) and dig a tunnel freeing them so they can get down to the nearby town and get help and live a normal life. El Topo gets out of the cave with a small woman who helps him busk in town for coins in which they can use to buy equipment and dynamite to speed up the tunneling process. The town, as they find out, has sick delights (branding people like cattle, having men with barb wire wrapped boxing gloves slugging it out in the street) and she worries that maybe her people won't be welcomed in the town when they are freed. A friar comes to town and is disgusted by the religion the people follow and tries to put a stop to it. El Topo ends up crossing paths with this friar, and he realizes it was his son that he had abandoned. The friar recognizes him too and vows to kill him. The small woman tells his son that he is now doing good things and about the tunnel. The friar agrees to let him live until the tunnel is finished. Soon, they are working together to finish it faster and when they breach the inner chamber, his son realizes he can't kill his father. At the same time, the people in the cave rush to the town for help and they are met with gunfire. Destroyed, El Topo picks up a gun again and wipes out the town and then sets himself on fire. The son, dressed like his father was at the start of the film, the small woman (oh she was pregnant with El Topo's child and had just given birth) and her baby, leave town.
It is clear that this film is full of imagery, ideas, and statements from beginning to end, I just can't tell you what many of them were and what they meant. That doesn't mean that I am not aware that El Topo is trying to say something, its just that maybe I wasn't understanding its language or...
...I just have a difficult time getting into more of the independent artistic cinema.
This isn't the first film to challenge me to watch it as a work of art and let it be more of a emotional experience as to opposed to an intellectual one. Even stating that this is not an intellectual experience is not correct either. There was a lot of thought that went into this film. I just hit a point while watching where my brain stopped trying to asks questions as to what everything stands for and I just let go and let it crash over me. That sounds like a transcendent experience, right? If you consider drowning to be transcendent, then sure.
There are many, many, more qualified people that can speak to what they believe this film is than myself but I will try my best to explain why films like this tend to hit me flat and hopefully I don't come across as some kind of neanderthal bitching about why everyone thinks fire is so ahead of its time.
When anyone makes something that is deeply personal to them, its never going to be 100 percent clear what their intent was, unless you ask them directly, and even then you may never know. I am perfectly okay with that and understand that my experience will not be yours and vice versa. I feel like poetry, physical art (in this case, I mean paintings but I understand that art is more than something you hang on your wall) and music can get away with people expecting it to be more up to interpretation. I feel like films have a red line where interpretation can only go so far and reasonably expect the viewer to go with them till the end. I don't think El Topo gives a single shit about whether it loses people along the way, and while I can respect that artistically, I can not find enjoyment in that.
Generally when I write these posts, I keep the score from the film running until I am finished as it helps keeps me in the mood of the film. I broke away from that because I had to find the right way into thinking about my reaction to this film. The only way I can put it in perspective is from the same way I approach Radiohead. I am currently listening to a mix of Amnesiac, Kid A, and Ok Computer. Each one of these albums I didn't like the first time I heard them, but I would revisit them a few months later and something about them just clicked and I love them.
Another way for me to approach it to is think about one of my favorite Picasso paintings, Guernica.
Some people might be off put by the abstract imagery and the chaos it is presenting. For me, once I learned the origin of the piece, it all snapped into view. How do you make a single image that tries to encapsulate all the feelings and desperation that would come from such a devastating event? Picasso decided to go for something surreal and it resonates with me. Someone else might be too off put by the style to let it speak to them. I can't fault them for that. I hope people won't fault me too much for not really digging El Topo.
Here is a scene that I can present that I think speaks to the hypocritic power of faith that I think the film is trying to point out. The church leader is saying that God will protect them if they have faith and then hands out a revolver with a single bullet in it. A person will need to put it to their head and pull the trigger to see if they have faith.
It's a miracle until it isn't and tempting fate is not the same thing as having faith. So there are things I can say I liked and feel that I understand about the film.
I feel like this is a film I should give another chance after having time to let it gestate but for now it was not a revelatory first watch. I welcome the dialogue about how I didn't allow myself the right perspective or if there is other information I need to consider in order to appreciate what is being said.
I will never regret the journey. I would appreciate it if someone can help me read the map along the way though.
Western Checklist (this time it is not a checklist but a series of questions):
Why did the child at the beginning have to be naked? I am sure it was a statement about innocence but he was naked for a long time.
Why did the one bandit have an assortment of women's footwear? Why did the other one make a naked lady drawing out of beans and then try to sex it?
Was the deflating balloon to signal a gunfight a joke about how arbitrary those moments can be in other westerns?
Were any fake animal carcasses created for this film? I don't think so. It feels like every gutted horse, skinned goat/sheep, and rabbit set on fire were real.
Was there a particular reason why men's and women's voices were gender switched at times?
How did you convince the actors to be near a real lion that was just chained up a few feet away?
Not a question, but here's a piece of the score that went along with El Topo. It isn't bad.
Rating:
I am not going to give this film a rating. This is not because I didn't particularly enjoy the film but because I think films like El Topo defy rating. This is an experience, for good and for ill, and your mileage is going vary greatly on how much you enjoy pure surreal imagery.
I am sure it was not planned like this when I asked my friend and resident genre movie database, Kevin to give me a wide swath of westerns to watch for this list, that it would seem like one film's extremes would stand out in contrast to the previous one's. More than likely it is that my mind is just taking it that way because there is no true order to these films other than release date. Either way, after the teeth rattling grit and reality of The Wild Bunch, I walk into the world of Sabata, which as far as I am concerned, is a borderline Italian anime just missing the actual animation portion of it.
Sabata is many things. It is over the top. It is ridiculous. It is logic breaking. The one thing it isn't is serious.
Let's get weird, Sabata Weird, shall we?
Film #20 Sabata (1969)
Here is the imdb.com cast listing. Here is the wikipedia page about the production (by the way, there isn't much on either page... Once Upon a Time in the West this is not).
Okay, the plot. A bank has been robbed in the night with $100,000 in it. The execution of the heist is actually quite complex and requires acrobats, a team of horses, and a premade section of twin railed track to roll the safe out on.
While this is going on, we meet Sabata (Lee Van Cleef), who is listening to a drunk Civil War veteran, Carrincha, (Ignazio Spalla). Carrincha won a medal in a battle and is trying to convince Sabata to take it so he can buy a bottle of booze. He tells Sabata medals are worth nothing after the fight is over. Sabata flicks a silver coin with accuracy and ease (more on this later) into Carrincha's palm and then enters the local saloon. Carrincha will now follow him the rest of the film as a defacto sidekick.
After shooting a craps table with his gun to show people that the dice being used were loaded, Sabata provides his own dice, rolls a seven to help an older man win back his money and then leaves, not before having a pretty girl stand aside from a player piano so that he can throw a (perfectly aimed) coin in its slot to turn it on. On his way out, he sees the aftermath of the bank robbery and sets off to find the men who stole the safe.
He does. And easily picks them all off at great distance with a small rifle. He returns to town with the safe and gets an award from the US Army as it was their $100,000 in the safe.
Turns out that some of the more nefarious business leaders in town set up the robbery so that they could take the money and buy the surrounding land because (say it with me) the railroad is coming through soon and the land will be worth a lot more very shortly. The leader of these men, Stengel (Franco Ressel) believes that he is superior to those around him and keeps an odd assortment of suits of armor, two odd black painted wood cutouts of silhouetted men in a gun duel that are used in a deadly showdown game, and a half cane with a trigger that shoots what appears to be a poison tipped dart, in his place of business/home (it isn't quite clear but I don't know if poison shooting canes are more of a home decor thing or business appropriate).
Realizing that as Sabata has returned the safe, their plans could be found out, Stengel orders his men to kill anyone that was associated with the robbery. Sabata figures it out and keeps some very incriminating evidence for himself and tells Stengel and his business partners that he will take $20,000 and then give up the evidence. Stengel, thinking he can just get Sabata killed for cheaper, hires a lot of different people to kill Sabata with very little success. Each time they fail, Sabata's price goes up.
Meanwhile, there is another mysterious stranger in town that plays a banjo and seems to have a past with Sabata. His name is... Banjo (William Berger, but for some reason I kept seeing Roger Moore). He seems to help Sabata and is one step ahead everything, but is just biding his time until he can find the opportunity he is looking for.
Oh, and there is a Native American who doesn't speak but perches on rooftops, watching, and helps out Carrincha and Sabata. He can make amazing leaps and flips and is good on a horse. He has no name but Carrincha calls him Alley Cat.
Did I mention Carrincha is also deadly accurate with throwing knives? And that Sabata has a small revolver that has separate gun barrels in its handle? And that Sabata carries a bag with him at all times that he can rig so that his hand gun fires from inside it? Oh, and that Banjo's banjo is also a gun? If any of that makes you smile, then Sabata is probably a great film for you.
After Day of Anger, I was happy to see Lee Van Cleef again. His Sabata is probably the closest I will get to see him as a good guy, but even here he is good only by virtue that he is working on the side of the law to blackmail the other bad guys, so good is probably not the right word. He is a better guy.
His gunfighting skills here are super human, that's the only way to put it. He never misses and he comes up with Macgyver level traps to distract the bad guys. There is one sight gag of him posing like a picture in a frame that is so over the top, you have to respect that the film makers went there. No matter how much disbelief you have to suspend (and it would be all the disbelief in the world), Van Cleef makes Sabata so damn cool.
Speaking of disbelief, Alley Cat's agility is laugh out loud amazing. The film wants you to believe he can jump down and then leap up to his next target, but in reality you can tell they put mini trampolines behind the objects he was leaping onto so that he can spring upward to the next thing. It works but it is so silly. I do appreciate that even though he is mute, he gets across some friendly warmth toward Sabata and Carrincha.
Banjo as a character is equal parts badass and frustratingly unbelievable. William Berger always plays the character with a smile at the corner of his lips and you get the feeling that he plays the banjo as more of way to annoy people than really to entertain. His outfit is tasselled with jingly bells that cause him to jingle and jangle with each step. And I just wanted to give him a haircut so goddam bad.
I need to speak about Franco Ressel's Stengel. His character's feel and look vaguely reminded me of Javier Bardem's Silva from Skyfall. There was an effeminate quality in this character that would have been way more interesting in a more serious western. It still works here and Ressel's arrogant and kind of twisted performance made him a good bad guy. He would have been at more home in Django Kill ...If You Live, Shoot! with the rest of those dark townspeople.
There is a scene between Stengel and Sabata that I wish I could link but I am not able to find it. It sums up the whole film quite well. They are in the room with a large long dining table that has a number of glass liquor bottles on it. Sabata sits down, tells Stengel to sit. As Stengel sits, he places his dart cane on the table, perfectly aimed at Sabata. Sabata, while talking, places a glass bottle in the path of the cane. Stengel, responding, awkwardly and blatantly moves the cane further to the right, with another clear shot at Sabata. Sabata then places another bottle of liquor in the way. It was the world's best worst game of chess I have ever seen. You can appreciate the posturing going on but it was so weird and funny.
Below is a scene that is a showdown between Sabata and Banjo. Banjo is turning on them as he has been offered a lot money to do so. Check out the music that plays during the clip, it is so great.
That bit contains ridiculous dialogue, weird guns, unrealistically accurate gunshots, and sweet organ music. Not much more needs to be said about the tone of Sabata.
Speaking of the music, it is my favorite part of the film. The score was done by Marcello Giombini, and it is just as over the top as the film is. Some serious parts but then it has a great guitar riff that is similar to the title theme to Riz Ortlani's Day of Anger score. I can listen to this one on a loop and makes me wish I had it on vinyl.
When researching The Mercenary, I learned about how comedy started seeping into Spaghetti Westerns and immediately sunk the sub-genre. I can see why that would be and it is a bummer because I feel like there was a brazenness I have seen in Leoni's and Corbucci's films that I feel like could have been explored more before this era closed. Comedy can have its place, but if it stifled the direction these films were heading, then it is a shame. Sabata is ridiculous but it makes me wonder what they could have done if they would learned more into the darkly weird like Django Kill! than the over the top suspension of disbelief breaking action they chose to go with here.
Sabata is a fun film and worth a watch. This is the perfect film to have on in the background during a get together because you can watch Alley Cat do some crazy jumps or see Stengel use his dart cane or see Sabata throw his coins and hit every target he intends and laugh and shake your head at what craziness you just watched. Carrincha would agree with that.
Western Checklist (nowhere near official or scientific):
Weird gang member names? You have an Alley Cat and a Banjo. Checked and marked.
Beautiful landscapes? The one thing I will point out is Stengel's murder office. The rich reds and weird architecture belonged more in a horror film than a western and again, I wish his portion was in a more serious film.
Any terrified horses? Not like the last few films. A covered wagon explodes, so I am sure that bothered some of them. At least it wasn't a horse bomb.
How many Ernest Borgnines? Outside of Van Cleef, there isn't anyone here that I can recall seeing in another film.
Does Lee Van Cleef rival Fonzie in his ability to throw coins and make things happen? I mean, I know the Fonz would either snap his fingers or bang the side of a jukebox to make it work, but it's the same principal. They are equals in this regard.
A better title for this film would have been 'Heads I Win, Tails You Die!'
Does it have a theme song with the name of the film in the title? Kind of. Listen to the compilation below and you will hear the name Sabata said out loud followed by some laughter. I love this score.
Rating:
I am going to give Sabata 3.5 out of 5 tin stars. It is fun movie and Lee Van Cleef is great as always. The ridiculous ways guns are used and deployed are half the fun. Again, I wish some of this material was played more seriously but that's on me and not this film. The music is amazing. This a fun breezy watch and there are worse ways to spend a hour and forty five minutes.
So after watching a film, I like to go and dive into the trivia and productions notes about it. I normally post the links to imdb.com and wikipedia at the top of my posts (and I will do the same here) but I want to point out one bit of trivia that I feel speaks a lot about The Wild Bunch.
John Wayne complained that the film destroyed the myth of the Old West.
I wonder how accurate that is but it feels oddly appropriate after having just seen True Grit before this, a film that takes the piss out of the traditional western and has some shocking moments of violence with some less than respectable characters. Did it honor the myth of the Old West?
The only honor the Wild Bunch worried about was amongst Pike and his gang.
Film #19 The Wild Bunch (1969)
Here is the imdb.com cast listing. Here is the wikipedia page about the production.
Set in 1913, Pike Bishop (William Holden) and his gang, Dutch (Ernest Borgnine!), the Gorch Brothers (Warren Oates and Ben Johnson, Angel (Jamie Sanchez) and handful of others, are on the very edge of the Texas-Mexico border where the west is still wild but that time is soon coming to an end. They rob a bank dressed as soldiers but are ambushed by Deke (Robert Ryan) a former member of Pike's gang that was sent to prison but given a conditional release if he can capture or kill the gang within 30 days.
The ambush is a complete massacre as Deke's posse is made up of scraps of men that are bounty hunters but are quick to shoot and not think about consequences. What happens is a lot of local townspeople end up in the crossfire and the streets are littered with their bodies while Pike and most of his gang escapes, with one of them blinded by gunfire and can barely stay on his horse. When that man falls, he tells Pike to just end it fast and Pike shoots him point blank, knowing that any weakness will slow them down and that once a man has served his purpose, they are not worth much more.
After getting across the border, they stop long enough to split their score to find out the bags of gold coins they thought they had were full of metal washers. They know that Deke set a trap for them and it almost cost them their lives.
Pike is getting older and knows that his life as a bandit is ending because of his age and that the times are changing. 'We got to start thinking beyond our guns, those days are closing fast,' he tells them as they are planning their next move. They head further into Mexico to Angel's village in order to throw Deke off of their trail and while they are there, they learn that what little the village has has been taken by General Mapache (Emilio Fernandez), a corrupt officer with the Mexican Federal Army. Angel finds out that his father was killed by Mapache's men and a girl that he loved has run off to join them. Pike warns him that if he makes this about revenge, they will leave him in the village and be on their way. He agrees to stay with them and not make it an issue.
They leave the village and head towards the next major town in hopes to figure out their next move and find themselves in the middle of Mapache's troops and the General himself. They decide to go to talk to his men in hopes of trading their extra horses for supplies. While sitting down for a drink, the girl that Angel loves walks by them, he calls out to her, she rejects him and laughs in his face and goes and sits on the lap of Mapache. So Angel pulls his gun out and shoots her in the chest, killing her. This gets the attention of the General, thinking that Angel was trying to shoot him. Both sides talk, and come to an understanding: Mapache needs guns and ammunition to keep his fight against the rebels going, and Pike and his men need gold.
An uneasy agreement is formed, the five of them will rob a US Army train (something that Pike has had eye on as a target for while now) for their weapons shipment and each of them will be paid 2,500 in gold. They agree to the deal as they have little choice and so begins a three pronged dilemma: the gang robbing the train and delivering the weapons, playing along with Mapache long enough to get what they want without being killed, and Deke hot on their trail as soon as they set foot back in the state of Texas.
Okay, that's the main thrust of the story. I feel like I will end up spoiling the rest of the film in order to talk about it a little more, so if you have not seen The Wild Bunch, please stop reading and go watch this film. You will not regret it and much like The Great Silence, it would be terrible if I was to rob anyone else of the jaw dropping gut punches that are thrown repeatedly over and over again in this film.
The violence in this film is equal parts horrifying and beautiful. I have talked before about how a lot of the films up to this point would show someone getting shot, they clutch their chest and fall down, with blood showing up later on their person. Even though you clearly see someone getting shot, there was a tidiness to the violence, no weight with the actions. This is not the case in the Wild Bunch.
For example, this is the ambush at the bank robbery at the start of the film:
The Wild Bunch tricks you at the very start of the sequence (not seen in the clip) with the gang crossing the street to the bank, they bump into a older woman who drops her packages. Dutch picks them up and offers to carry them for her, and Pike walks her by the arm across the street. No violence, these are civilized men. Then when the job turns sour and bullets start flying, you see actual squib (the exploding packs of blood that simulate gunshots) work here and it really sells the chaos and terribleness of the situation. What also sells the moment? Seeing an innocent woman getting stomped by a panicking horse. Oh, and all the kids watching while their families die around them.
Not only are there practical effects improvements that showcase the reality of violence here, but also advancements in film making itself. You will notice that the pacing of the sequence is very up tempo with a lot of quick edits and going back between real time and slow motion. This new technique (of effective smooth slow motion) was shown to director Sam Peckinpah and he knew immediately he wanted to use it in The Wild Bunch. If you slow down the violence, it looks like it hits twice as hard. You see the odd and gruesome ballet of a how a human body spins against their will and then falls to the ground. You see the horses trying to charge forward but they veer to the side like a boat slowly capsizing. It's something we take for granted now (Zack Snyder has made a career on powerful slow motion shots and Michael Bay has destroyed our attention spans with his lighting quick edits) but this feels like it was blazing a trail with a new visual vocabulary of how you could tell a story. This may be too grand a statement, but for me, The Wild Bunch is to westerns what Citizen Kane was to dramas. I left both with the same feeling that what would come after should be affected by their presence.
It is also fitting that the medium would be moved forward into more modern techniques and more reality based story telling with a film that is all about the end of a specific time period. I think I said in one of the earlier posts that the Old West was roughly between 1865, the end of the Civil War, till 1895, so a span of thirty plus years. With The Wild Bunch taking place 1913, it is very end of that time and soon electricity would be available to a lot of country, telegraphs could submit information quickly between towns, we had already had sustainable flight, and the automobile would be quickly replacing the horse. The days of robbing and crossing state lines with the reasonable knowledge you could get away was over. When the gang sees General Mapache's vehicle, they are truly taken aback by it. One of them even asks it if runs on steam. The 20th century was coming to them whether liked it or not.
This is a theme I have seen in previous westerns on this list (even going back to the first film Johnny Guitar with Vienna building her saloon/casino in a location that she knew would eventually be along the route of the still being built railroad) but it feels more present here in The Wild Bunch as its eye wasn't towards the future, the future was now and you had two choices, go along with it or get swallowed up by it. We got to start thinking beyond our guns, those days are closing fast, indeed.
A few notes about the guns in the film before I forget to mention them. First, Peckinpah made it a point to have all the gun shots sound different and appropriate for the weapon being fired. Up to this point, no matter if it was a hand gun, a rifle, or a shotgun, a lot of films would have the same stock gunfire sounds. This would change the way guns were treated in films going forward. Second, the type of guns used varied from old six shot revolvers to slide action 9 mm handguns to pump grip shotguns to a heavy duty tripod mounted machine gun. Dutch even uses some grenades. The efficiency of violence was progressing.
None of the men are presented as inherently good but you get the feeling of loyalty that has been earned by many jobs pulled off together and the years of barely getting out alive. Pike has a hard code that he lives by and he doesn't like breaking it. Dutch trusts Pike and will ride with him wherever he goes, even if he knows that odds are not in their favor. Deke, only driven by not wanting to go back to prison (which they show him getting flogged by guards in a short but nasty flashback), doesn't really want to chase down Pike as he states that he would much rather be with them than hunt them, as he knows that he has basically turned on his family. I appreciate that these bad men are bad and won't hesitate to shoot someone if they are in their way, but it gives them a little more depth as they do care about each other. Even the Gorch brothers (the other two in the gang... I would mention them more but they aren't given much to do outside some weird comedy relief with them partying with some local ladies in very large barrel of wine), who were always challenging Pike over his decision making but ultimately fall in line when they have a job to do and with the group's back is against the wall.
The train robbery sequence is amazing and surprisingly, a lot of fun. It was cool to see how they planned to take the engine and the single cargo flat car with the munitions without alerting the soldiers that were in the passenger car escorting the supplies. It went from a silent slow moving heist to a full tilt chase sequence that eventually lead to Pike sending the train backwards down the track after getting what they needed as they headed off with a wagon full of weapons. It all culminates in a tense moment where they are crossing a bridge into Mexico that they had rigged with dynamite. They lit the fuse but then the wagon gets stuck on the bridge, so they are trying to free the wagon while the army and Deke's men are coming down on them. Just watch the finale below.
Those were real stuntmen with horses on that bridge when it exploded. You will never see anything like that done again as it is just too dangerous, but goddam, that is sight to behold. There is a quick moment when Pike takes his hat off to say goodbye to Deke, as you would see in most westerns when the bad guy gets away, but once the bridge explodes, you see the horror on his face at what actually happened. Spectacle has cost.
They get away and arrange a payment system with Mapache (as they don't trust him to honor his word... and rightfully so), but the General takes Angel captive in the process as he found out that Angel gave some of the stolen guns to his village so that they can fight back. They rest of the gang are paid and can leave, however, Dutch points out that Angel earned their trust and he did his part in the heist and he is worth saving.
So, with Deke right on their heels, they make a decision to go back in Mapache's lion's den to get Angel out and to keep Deke away. Its a dangerous gamble and they know it. Mapache won't give up Angel and keeps him tied up to back of his car and drags him around the courtyard, with children laughing and hopping on his back like he is a sled. Pike is warned to not push it and go enjoy the spoils of victory as they delivered on their promise of getting the weapons.
This brings about one of the most badass moments I think I have ever seen in a film. Without much spoken between the four of them, and a laugh from Dutch, they load up and walk towards where the General is feasting.
Not only is the way they carry themselves badass, but the way the sequence is shot is amazing. Watch how people cross in the front of them and how almost everyone stays in focus in the foreground, the middle, and the background. It creates a sense of how they are being watched and almost swarmed but they just keep marching forward.
What happens after that is probably one of the most violent sequences I have ever seen in a film. It is equal parts shocking and breathtaking. The sheer amount of violence is one thing, but then how the individuals carry themselves during it is also noteworthy. One of the gang uses a woman as a human shield. These are not good men and they use every advantage they have and the film will remind you of this often.
William Holden as Pike is stellar. Very similar to Henry Fonda in Once Upon a Time in the West as both have a charisma about them and both know they are on the losing end of time. Also, both have kind faces when they want but can turn to stone in a moment's notice. You don't see leads like this anymore and it is a shame. There is an inherent complexity to a character when you cast an older actor in the role of someone near the end of their profession. Much like Lee Van Cleef in Day of Anger, they know they aren't what they once were but they are crafty enough to still make it work.
Ernest Borgnine as Dutch was great. He was given the chance to bring some range to a character that could have just been a side kick. He also knows that times are changing, but as long as he rides with Pike, they have a shot. He gets a great twinkle in his eye when a plan is coming together and you just smile with him. I will always love him no matter the role he plays.
Robert Ryan as Deke Thornton is also worth mentioning. He always knew what Pike was going to do, but was given such little resources, he knew that it was always going to be an uphill battle. He also did not like his role in being the judas goat (which is what he was called at one point early in the film). You can tell he was conflicted in going after the gang, and there was atmosphere of resignation he carried with him. He was a tired broken former bandit that was doing what he had to do live. Ryan's performance really got that across.
The score by Jerry Fielding is very rich and complex and fits the film very well. It goes from having military drums to the muted horns and strings you would hear in Spaghetti Westerns. There are times where it felt like it was almost television drama-like, but I think that was more of an effect on how TV changed its sound after this film came out. Its a good score and it feels like the most Hollywood of the ones I have heard recently.
I have talked a lot of Pekinpah's stylistic choices for the film but I haven't mentioned how beautiful it is in general. There are plenty of wonderful shots of the open blue sky with some clouds scattered about that just pop. Every frame of this film was stuffed with detail and it shows. Its weird to say that there is beautifully shot violence but that does apply to The Wild Bunch.
This is a great film and it deserves it place on all the Best Ofs that it is listed on. It is a gritty, fully realized work that tells a story of hard men making hard decision with bloody consequences. It never intended to have a good ending and rode hard all the way to its massively violent finale. Watch this film and understand a lot of what we appreciate and love that came after this owes a debt to The Wild Bunch.
Western Checklist (nowhere near official or scientific):
Weird gang member names? Well, Pike is a badass name and Dutch is just cool.
Beautiful landscapes? Yes, it was shot in Mexico and it has those wonderful old Spanish sanctuaries that were functional but in ruins.
Any terrified horses? Yes. So many. And at least one real death as a horse drowned in the bridge explosion. Also, there are scorpions tortured at the beginning by children. You see them being placed in a pile of swarming ants and then they are all SET ON FIRE. It fit the films themes very well but I am pretty sure those scorpions didn't volunteer.
How many Ernest Borgnines? I didn't realize when I made this joke during the first film I watched that he would be in another western on the list. He is so great and I am glad I got to see him dig into a bigger and better role than he had in Johnny Guitar.
Any buildings catch on fire? Surprisingly for a film with so much realistic violence, there was not a single building fire. I am sure had they done it, it would have been beautiful and horrific in equal measures.
Does it have a theme song with the name of the film in the title? No, but here is a portion of the score and like I said above, it is quite good.
Rating:
I am going to give this 5 out of 5 tin stars. I think I prefer my westerns bloody and darker and this fits the bill nicely. The editing and use of slow motion gives this film a different feel to what I have seen before and it adds weight to what you are witnessing. The acting is top notch and the realistic effects of gun violence really drive the point home that the lives of these men came at the cost of many others. Highly recommended and please, if you have not seen this film, do it as soon as you can.
I believe this will be the last John Wayne film on the list. I have seen him three other times (The Searchers, Rio Bravo, and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance) and each time he has grown a little more on me. I can see why he belongs among the greats to define a genre. This was a really fine way to say goodbye to the Duke for The Year Of The Western!
Film #18 True Grit (1969)
Here is the imdb.com cast listing. Here is the wikipedia page about the production.
The film starts off with meeting the Ross family as the father, Frank, is about to go away to buy some horses with his assistant Tom Chancy (Jeff Corey). Frank says goodbye to his 14 year old daughter, Mattie (Kim Darby) who is smarter than her years and tells her father to be careful. She does not trust Tom.
The very next scene, Tom shoots Frank in the street after a drunken argument and then takes off.
Mattie comes to town to collect her fathers belongings, including his massive Colt Dragoon handgun, and wants to talk to the local law enforcement about their search for Tom. They say there isn't much they can do as Tom ran off to the Indian nation and she would need to talk to a U.S. Marshall who can travel that territory. Mattie meets Marshal "Rooster" J. Cogburn (John Wayne), a drunk who has a habit of shooting and killing the wanted criminals instead of bringing them back to face trial. She convinces him to look for Tom (with some money flashed in his face). Meanwhile, a Texas Ranger, named La Boeuf (Glen Campbell), which sounds likes La Beef, is looking for Tom Chancey as well. Turns out Tom, who goes by other names, also has a habit of shooting people and then running. Mattie wants Tom dead, either by her hand or to be hung in the local county, and Le Boeuf wants to take him alive so that he can get a big reward in Texas... and then hang him. Cogburn just wants to drink and get paid... so he can probably go drink some more.
What goes on from there is a triangle of sorts: Mattie wants to come along with Rooster as he hunts down Tom, La Boeuf wants to team up with Rooster but leave Mattie behind because she is just 14 and is likely a liability, and Rooster doesn't respect La Boeuf or any 'Texicans' and flip flops over Mattie's involvement because he likes her stubbornness (it reminds him of him). The three ride together but aren't always on the same page. Hilarity ensues.
This film is an odd duck to say the least. It wants to be an irreverent comedy at times, slap sticky in others, and then deadly serious in others. It is a fine line to walk and I don't know if it earns it.
For example, like I said above, it's the second scene in the film and Mattie's father dies faster than Bruce Wayne's parents. It is sudden and brutal. The scene after, Mattie is in town and making smart aleck know it all comments about everything around her. It is almost psychopathic how little she doesn't seem to care about her father's death but gets tied up in commenting on almost everything around her. At the boarding house she is staying at, the host asks her is she wants more biscuits and gravy. Mattie's response? She takes more and says that as she is being charged 25 cents for the meal, she better make it worth her while. When the same person tells her that the boarding house is full and that she would have to share a bed, Mattie states that she should only expect to pay half the fee for the room then.
I understand that the point of her character is that she thinks she has the world figured out and that she will not take no for answer. It is supposed to be somewhat endearing as she is facing off against a number of much older adults, but it feels very forced and awkward at times.
I also think part of it is the fault of the handling of the source material. I can't say I have read the book that the film is based on, but I get the feeling the dialogue is almost shakespearean in a way in which a lot of words are said but it takes a while to discern their meaning, at least until you get into the patterns and rhythms of the dialogue.
Go back up to the trailer 1 minute 39 seconds in (or click here), La Boeuf is telling Mattie, a 14 year old girl, "A little earlier I gave some thought to stealin' a kiss form you, although you are very young... and you're unattractive to boot. But now I'm of a mind to give you five or six good licks of my belt." Those lines don't roll off the tongue and Glen Campbell does his best to get through it. Aside from it being creepy, that isn't how conversational English sounds. I think the person who adapted the book into a screen play must have loved all the dialogue as it was printed but didn't read it aloud as they were turning it into a film script.
I will admit that I have not seen the Coen brothers 2010 remake of True Grit but I get the feeling that they understand the langue and tone of the book better than what was presented here. Its not a knock against this film, anytime anything challenges your perspective is good thing but I just feel that a lot of people in this film were not up to the delivery of the colorful lines they were given.
Except John Wayne. Even if he runs the dialogue over with his bulldozer swagger, his unique cadence makes it work. Rooster is an odd character (bird?) that are equal parts piss, vinegar, and booze, but you still kind of like him no matter what is going on. He carries himself as larger than life but then he gets blackout drunk and passes out in a bed in the back of a chinese butcher shop. When he keeps sneaking drinks along the journey, you know it is bad, but it never leads to a poor decision being made or to him not being in the spot to save the day. At the end of the film when he takes his horse and jumps a four post high fence, the smile on his face is genuine and you want to ride off with him. You can see why he won an Oscar for this role.
I will state now that Glen Campbell does okay in his role. His La Boeuf rubs Rooster the wrong way but ultimately they are on the right side of the law and have each other's backs. It is a proto buddy cop vibe in that way. I think the stunt casting of him in order to draw attention to the film with a song (more on that down below) could have went way wrong. I think Dean Martin in Rio Bravo was a stronger actor but his character was given more to do, so I won't hold that against the large shoes that Campbell had to fill as being a musician cast as a sidekick to John Wayne.
Okay, back to the weirdness of the film. All that I said above makes it sounds like more of a comedy than a true western, and the actors and the music really want you to believe that, but there is a streak of darkness that runs through True Grit that is hard to reconcile with its overall lighter tone. Like the father dying brutally was quick and unexpected. The town Mattie went to to get her father's things was full because of a local three person hanging (the crowd was festive just like in Hang 'Em High), which they then showed, abrupt drops with abrupt stops and their feet still moving as they die.
Then there is this scene. Rooster, Mattie, and La Beouf come across a 'dug out' (I am guessing a small abandoned mud covered hut with a fenced in pen for horses) that was supposed to be empty but they find two men inside, one with a leg wound (Dennis Hopper). Rooster believes they have information on where Tom is and is willing to play the two men against each other in order to get the information he wants. Just watch what happens.
Holy shit. Dennis Hopper getting his fingers chopped off, getting stabbed brutally in the gut, and then dying on the floor spilling his guts, so to speak, to Rooster. There is nothing funny about that scene and it comes out of nowhere to stab you in the gut as well.
This film can't always figure out what it wants to be. It feels 10 years older than it actually is (the fact that this came out after Once Upon a Time in the West baffles me) with the upbeat score and John Wayne doing John Wayne things, but then it drops some very graphic (for a Hollywood made western that is ) violence on you and it can't make up it's mind if it wants to be a romp or a coming of age story for Mattie and what the real cost of revenge is. Her firing the Dragoon is not played for laughs but the moments right after are, and that kind of sums up the film.
True Grit is an interesting film as it shows American made westerns could try to be something different and they could grow in different directions. It is also a great showcase for John Wayne. He seemed so comfortable and confident in every scene he was in. When you see him face off against four wanted men in a clearing with only his hand gun and single shot rifle, you never doubt who is coming out on top. And goddam, they way he flips the rifle to load it is badass. No wonder the Terminator stole that move.
Thanks for letting me ride along John, I hope to see you again after this list is completed.
Western Checklist (nowhere near official or scientific):
Weird gang member names? You got a Rooster, a La Boeuf , a man named Moon (Hopper) and a man named Pepper (A severely underused Robert Duvall).
Beautiful landscapes? This takes place mostly in the mountains of Colorado and it is very pretty. Like a beer commercial but with guns.
Any terrified horses? YES. I don't want to know how they get them to fall down when an actor gets shot and has to fall with the horse.
How many Ernest Borgnines? John Fiedler played the oft talked about Lawyer Daggett. He was the voice of Piglet for almost 40 years.
Does it have a cat that acted pretty chill in front of the camera? Yes, and his character's name was General Sterling Price. I didn't even know cats could serve in the armed forces.
Does it have a theme song with the name of the film in the title? Yes. I really thought we had moved passed that point but then True Grit comes along and surprises me. For a song that has no good reason to exist, it's pretty damn pleasant to the ears.
Rating:
I am going to give True Grit 3.5 out of 5 tin stars. I gave the Searchers a 3 and I liked this one better than it. I know that sounds arbitrary and it is but I didn't dislike this film. I enjoyed John Wayne's more lose and rough around the edges Rooster Cogburn and he carried the film a long way. It does pique my interest now to watch the remake and see how they address the tone and if they can find a better balance with the humor, the sudden violence, and the oddly poetic dialogue.
