An Italian American Spanish spaghetti western directed by Sergio Leone, starring Henry Fonda, Jason Robards, Charles Bronson and Gabriele Ferzetti.
A woman is on her way from New Orleans to a rural area to meet her new husband, but bandits kill him and his family before she gets there. There is a railroad baron leading the bandits and the dead family have purchased land that will soon have a railroad in it. A stranger playing a harmonica shows up to oppose the bandits.
Too long! The simple plot unfolded over almost three hours. The characters were typical of a standard western We had the lone wolf stranger, fancy lady, gentlemanly super-villain and his bandits. The audio was not up to par for Ennio this time. His music was extremely sparse and simple. There was also an Alejandro Jodorowsky style high pitched squeaking noise like in El Topo in the intro that bugged the hell out of me. The video was similar. The eye-line matching close-ups weren't as close and the pulling out crane shots were so predictable. Overall, not really worth the three hours. I rate this o.k. because it wasn't up to par for this team, but not bad enough to talk shit about.
A French Italian crime thriller film directed by Terence Young, starring Charles Bronson.
A man who used to be in the military runs a boating business and has a happy life with his wife and daughter. After seeing his picture in a newspaper, his army buddies catch up with him. They are now drug smugglers so they break into his house, kidnap his wife and daughter and try to force him to use his boat for drug runs.
The whole film happened "at gunpoint" and this phrase should be added to every sentence in my plot summary. For some extra fun, you can add "while being threatened with a weapon". I liked how the plot was presented: It started with "now" and then, once some plot is established, it filled in "before" before moving on to "next". The pace and editing were good. The acting and general presentation was very clear. Technically speaking, it's not too bad. I just didn't really get into it. Crime movies of most types aren't my thing and all the guns put me off too. I'm giving it one of those weird pink ratings because it was well made, but I didn't really like it.
An American Western by John Sturges, starring Yul Brynner, Steve McQueen, James Coburn and Charles Bronson.A gunslinger finds that a small village is being raided by harriers on a regular basis. He gathers more gunslingers and together they try to protect the village.This is the American remake version of Seven Samurai (Shichinin No Samurai) and the plot is almost identical. Just substitute revolvers (hard calibers) for swords. I thought the plot and characters were good. James Coburn is a must for any western film if it does ya fine. The style was very clear and coherent, say thank ya. I'm rating this good, excuse the Dark Tower slang, but it's about effing GUNSLINGERS!
