I no longer follow the Western genre with the huge pleasure I had in my childhood. I prefer Thriller, Science Fiction, Comedy, a good Documentary. Except for Sergio Leone, his films I'm reviving cyclically, about 10 to 10 years, with great great pleasure. Not just for Leone's sake and his unique, original stories (though sometimes inspired by Japanese like Kurosawa), but also for Morricone's music and some actors, especially Gian Maria Volontè, Lee Van Cleef, Klaus Kinski, Charles Bronson. Clint Eastwood never fascinated me (not in Westerns, I liked him in "The Bridges of Madison County" and "Escape from Alcatraz"). Why am I saying all this here? Because Max Dillman, the director of this western, is none other than the one who filmed "Fistful of Dollars" and
"For a Few Dollars More", Mr. Expert Cinematographer Massimo Dallamano, dead at the tender age of only 59. He just tried his luck, like many others, with a not too great story, in fact one very predictable, to copy the success of Leone's dollars. The Cinematography, also very professional as Master Dallamano's, is not signed by him, as would have been natural, but by the Spanish Emilio Foriscot. The distribution is made up of unknown actors, which, despite the slim scenario, they pay off somehow honorably. The music of the film, signed by Egisto Macchi, is clearly the Morricone clone, with guitars and trumpets, but not so successful as the original. Surprisingly, Venantino Venantini, after seeing him in many roles totally opposite to the tough guy, is here trying to equate Gian Maria Volontè as a villainous gunman. Of course he does not succeed, no one can do that, but he is not bad. The second reason I wanted to see this movie, apart from Massimo Dallamano, was the presence of another huge talent, another delight of my childhood, the Italian actor Enrico Maria Salerno. In spite of Salerno's talent and the only cool idea of the film, somehow like a christian symbol, in my humble opinion, the bullet holes in his character's hands (just like Jesus) (the idea had to be exploited and the script developed exactly there), the film is somewhere between average and mediocre. Only for those obsessed by Western.
Review of Bandidos
