You won't regret catching this one when it's on TV, unless you were expecting some black-and-white drama filmed in the Czech Republic in the rain. The story is simple enough, four mercenaries, Lancaster, Marvin, Strode, and Ryan, are hired by American millionaire, Bellamy, to steal back his kidnapped wife, Cardinale, from the revolutionary bandido, Palance, who used to be their compadre under Pancho Villa. Things get a little more complicated at the end. I'm not sure exactly who undergoes what kind of conversion in the last few minutes, or what happens to the gold. But no matter. You have to go with the flow on this one.
What a flow it is too. It's got about everything in it that you'd expect: action, character, humor, a strong plot line, eyeball-coagulatingly gorgeous locations in Death Valley and elsewhere, a fandango-tinged score by Maurice Jarre, galloping horses, exploding sticks of dynamite, smoking trains puffing and laboring away at their full speed of about fifteen miles per hour, the novelty of seeing somebody dressed like a cowboy shoot a pump shotgun, palpable desert heat, Conrad Hall's masterful shots of gorges that are almost mauve and all ready to be blown up to block the pass, Lancaster scampering out the window of somebody else's wife's house in his long johns, treacherous cholos, revolutionary fervor, post-revolutionary tristesse, a fiesta, a mass execution, and Palance trying to speak Spanish. Could you ask for more?
What craftsmanship. It's the kind of film about which you can truly say, "They don't make 'em like this anymore." (Maybe that's because they're just too much unpretentious fun to watch.) The acting echoes the semantic weight carried by the title. Here we have Lee Marvin at his best. He simply looks perfect for the part of the leader of the gang. And wardrobe should have earned a medal. He wears a dark blue shirt, buttoned up to the neck, an old army campaign hat, and beat-up stovepipe trousers over his dusty boots. He often carries a shotgun or a Lewis machine gun slung over one shoulder. Man becomes icon. His approach to the part is his singular combination of businesslike, cynical, basically trustworthy, darkly humorous, and Marvinish. At the end, just when he's given Lancaster up for dead, someone spots a dust cloud on the horizon and asks what it is, a whirling dervish? "That, gentlemen," says Marvin, "is the whirlingest dervish of them all." And when Lancaster finally rides up, full of bullet holes and trailing an unexpected burden, Marvin stands before him, hand on hip, looks away, and wordlessly extends to Lancaster a bottle of whiskey. In an earlier scene, Lancaster says to Marvin, "Well, I'll be damned." Marvin: "Most of us are." As a matter of fact there's quite a bit of 1960s wisecracking that goes on here, and not just by Marvin. Lancaster is preparing a load of dynamite on the side of a cliff and remarks to the others, "You light this fuse, you got thirty seconds to run like hell, and then dynamite -- not faith -- will move that mountain into this pass. Peace, brothers." I grant you that it's a bit hard to imagine a bunch of illiterate lowlifes in 1917 Mexico coming up with lines like that, but so what? What do you want, King Lear?
Some scenes are standouts. A tense moment while the Mexican army tries to pry some information out of a goatherd, while the gang hides in the boxcars of a train parked nearby. Throughout, no score intrudes, but none is needed because the steam locomotive is wheezing rhythmically away behind the dialog, an unsettling metallic ostinato that enhances the suspense better than any tingling tremolo could.
Palance, shot from his horse, manages to struggle to his hands and knees, still in the kill zone. What does he do? Does he immediately dash for cover? No -- he quickly scuttles crablike over to his cigar lying on the sand where it dropped after the bullet's impact, stuffs the cigar into his mouth, and only THEN dives behind a rock.
Woody Strode has only a few lines but doesn't really need many. He's as solid as Mount Rushmore and knows exactly what he's doing. Robert Ryan is no wimp in this movie but is clearly the only one who is moved by compassion throughout, for animals and for human.
Lancaster has an interesting observation about the Mexican revolution. "Maybe it's all one revolution. The good guys against the bad guys. The problem is -- who are the good guys?" Amen. We don't learn much about the revolution, and it's too bad because its history illustrates Lancaster's point rather well. The government at the time was dictatorial and Pancho Villa, one of the rebel leaders, was a hero to many Americans. Then, in an excess of ardor, Villa crossed the border and invaded Columbus, New Mexico, killing a number of soldiers and civilians. Now he was a villain. So we sent an expedition into Mexico to capture and punish Villa. The expedition only got so far into Mexican territory before it ran into a hastily organized Mexican army that was worried about territorial violations. Did that make Villa a hero again? You can see why Lancaster was confused.
Anyway, watch this movie. It's exciting, colorful, and amusing. It's a great shoot against a lot of scenery. And Claudia Cardinale has a voice like smoked Serrano jamon, and a bust line that only a Mediterranean woman could wield. It worked for Palance and it almost works for Lancaster.
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