Woodyanders
Rugged Texas sheriff Burt Sullivan (Franco Nero in fine two-fisted form) and his naive younger brother Jim (likable Alberto Dell'Aqua) head deep into Mexico to arrest the man who murdered their father. The pair find themselves trapped in a lawless and dangerous land in the wake of uncovering a shocking family secret. Director Ferdinando Baldi, who also co-wrote the compact script with Franco Rossetti, relates the absorbing story at a steady pace, maintains a tough serious tone throughout, and stages the plentiful exciting shoot-outs with aplomb. Nero and Dell'Aqua display a natural and engaging chemistry in the leads. The neat array of dastardly villains helps a lot: Joe Guardiola as the suavely slimy McLeod, Livio Lorenzon as sadistic bandito leader Alcade Miguel, and, best of all, Jose Suarez as the deliciously nasty and ruthless Cisco Delgado. The tragic ending packs a devastating emotional punch. Enzo Barboni's crisp widescreen cinematography provides an impressively expansive sense of scope. Anton Garcia's spare, yet stirring score hits the spot. A worthwhile oater.
FightingWesterner
Lawman Franco Nero and his younger brother say adiós to Texas and travel south of the border to seek justice for their long murdered father. Soon they discover that the killer is now a wealthy and oppressive landowner with some secrets to tell regarding the two brothers.Not as flamboyant as other Italian westerns, this is more like an American western in it's straight forwardness, though with a few European quirks and a bit more excessive violence.Still, it's colorful and entertaining with good location photography and an excellent musical score. Franco Nero's always good.Speaking of Nero, any western film with him in the lead invites unfair comparisons to Django. This is no exception.
cengelm
Sheriff Burt Sullivan and his younger brother Jim want to take revenge for their murdered father and say "Good bye, Texas!" to head for Cisco Delgado, the hiss-and-hate bad guy, who resides in Mexico. Unlike in many other Spaghetti Westerns the hero is never really slick and instead decides for an against-all-odds approach. The darkness of other serious spaghetti westerns is missing.The sung score is memorable, the cinematography of Enzo Barboni is mediocre, Franco Nero is good as usual while the other actors do their job with little ambition. Overall this Western has average quality.5 / 10.
ScottyB
What can you say about a film where the unbelievably poor dubbing was added almost thirty years after filming ? John Wayne, this is not ! Clearly produced by a studio not ordinarily used to the genre (or have the Spaniards been watching this for years rather than subtitle a real Western ?) Could probably have been better with American actors as the dubbed voices did not correlate with the facial expressions of the actors and emotion was often lacking in speech in this movie. Other than reservations with the acting and voice-overs, I found the plot to be rather drawn out, and the lack of scenery made me wonder if they could only afford one set which was re-painted for the other scenes. Might have been better if it was made in America, but probably more of a special interest movie to be viewed in the original language by people who perhaps have different tastes from the mainstream Western Genre
AD
