In prohibition times, a mysterious stranger drifts into the ramshackle town of Jericho on the American-Mexican border, run by two rival gangs of bootleggers. Sniffing paydirt, he hires himself out to both factions as a gunman. Can he stay one step ahead of the hoods ?
This is a stylish, hard-nosed gangster reworking of Sergio Leone's 1964 Per Un Pugno Di Dollari / A Fistful Of Dollars, which was a western remake of Akira Kurosawa's 1961 ronin classic Yojimbo (and all three stories bear a lot of similarity to Carlo Goldoni's 1753 comic play Il Servitore Di Due Padroni / The Servant Of Two Masters). It cites the Japanese film as its main source, but is essentially a remake of both; storywise it follows the samurai movie (for example, Walken's character is identical to Tatsuya Nakadai's), but visually it's much closer to Leone's (lots of guns). It's own hard-boiled style, with raspy narration and a town full of grifters, also comes from noir fiction (say, Dashiel Hammett's 1929 pot-boiler Red Harvest). In this sense, it's more of a series of cultural references and motifs than a movie, but it's still a lot of fun, remaining faithful to the classic tale of the mysterious pragmatic avenger, and the hybrid gangster/western setting is very original. Willis lacks the mythic qualities of Mifune and Eastwood, but is pretty good in the lead, with able support from Sanderson and Dern. The two best performances are by Hill regular Kelly as the head of the Irish clan (there's a beautifully tender moment where he expresses his unassailable love for Lombard whilst his goons look embarrassed) and the ever-reliable Walken as a nutty red-headed whispering psycho. This story will always be appealing because it slyly blurs the divide between hero and antihero - he helps and exploits people in equal measures. Slickly written by Hill in his usual tough-guy patois, with a strangled score by Ry Cooder, top-notch stuntwork by Allan Graf and great dusty sepia-soaked photography by Lloyd Ahern - surely this is the brownest film ever made. Well worth catching, but don't miss its two predecessors, particularly Yojimbo (the hardest to find), which is one of the most engrossing, stylishly-made and funniest mythic adventure movies of all time.
This is a stylish, hard-nosed gangster reworking of Sergio Leone's 1964 Per Un Pugno Di Dollari / A Fistful Of Dollars, which was a western remake of Akira Kurosawa's 1961 ronin classic Yojimbo (and all three stories bear a lot of similarity to Carlo Goldoni's 1753 comic play Il Servitore Di Due Padroni / The Servant Of Two Masters). It cites the Japanese film as its main source, but is essentially a remake of both; storywise it follows the samurai movie (for example, Walken's character is identical to Tatsuya Nakadai's), but visually it's much closer to Leone's (lots of guns). It's own hard-boiled style, with raspy narration and a town full of grifters, also comes from noir fiction (say, Dashiel Hammett's 1929 pot-boiler Red Harvest). In this sense, it's more of a series of cultural references and motifs than a movie, but it's still a lot of fun, remaining faithful to the classic tale of the mysterious pragmatic avenger, and the hybrid gangster/western setting is very original. Willis lacks the mythic qualities of Mifune and Eastwood, but is pretty good in the lead, with able support from Sanderson and Dern. The two best performances are by Hill regular Kelly as the head of the Irish clan (there's a beautifully tender moment where he expresses his unassailable love for Lombard whilst his goons look embarrassed) and the ever-reliable Walken as a nutty red-headed whispering psycho. This story will always be appealing because it slyly blurs the divide between hero and antihero - he helps and exploits people in equal measures. Slickly written by Hill in his usual tough-guy patois, with a strangled score by Ry Cooder, top-notch stuntwork by Allan Graf and great dusty sepia-soaked photography by Lloyd Ahern - surely this is the brownest film ever made. Well worth catching, but don't miss its two predecessors, particularly Yojimbo (the hardest to find), which is one of the most engrossing, stylishly-made and funniest mythic adventure movies of all time.