Movie Of The Day: THE PROFESSIONALS (1966).

THE PROFESSIONALS is a politically-charged white-men-in-Mexico Western that starts out bombastic and boistrous and maintains that stance throughout.  The opening vignettes introduce the four lead characters in their most characteristic arenas.  Rico Fardan, the reserved, pragmatic, always-prepared leader, is shown testing out a new machine gun that you know full well you’ll eventually see him use, due to the fact he’s played by Lee Marvin.  Hans Ehrengard, the frontier-era horse whisperer, is shown punching the shit out of an animal abuser.  That’s quintessential Robert Ryan, doomed decency and temperamental violence often in the same character.  Jacob Sharp, the archer, is  bringing a live captive into town for sentencing.  As played by Woody Strode, he’s a proto-DJANGO [UNCHAINED-style], a calmly-effective bounty hunter in an unfriendly time for guys who look like him.  And Bill Dolworth, the devilish explosives expert, is first introduced in bed with a woman who we quickly find out is another man’s wife, because the guy is about to walk in the door and Dolworth is pulling on his longjohns and diving out the window.  Burt Lancaster, one of the greatest Hollywood leading men ever, could play noir and he could play arthouse drama, but here he’s the comic relief and the leading man all in one.

Burt Lancaster, Lee Marvin, Robert Ryan, and Woody Strode.  That is kind of an all-star super-team of old-school movie tough guys.  If I have to bring up THE A-TEAM to get some of you youngsters to go watch this lesser-acknowledged classic, then that’s what I’m going to do.  It’s clear where that popular 1980s action template came from — the grizzled and grey veteran soldier, the horndog ladies’ man, and the two other guys who handle all the transportation.  Four guys with their own individual and shared histories take on a dirty job no one else is able or ready to handle.

In THE PROFESSIONALS, these four rough riders are hired by big-business tycoon Ralph Bellamy — you know him best from a weirdly similar role in TRADING PLACES – to rescue his young wife from a marauding revolutionary who has taken her south of the border.  Bellamy perenially played a lovelorn shnook but here he’s an intriguingly nastier sort of character.  In the great Hollywood tradition of casting great stars in ethnically incongruous roles, Jack Palance plays the revolutionary, “Jesus Raza,” and the Tunisian-by-way-of-Italy bombshell Claudia Cardinale plays the Mexican-born “Maria,” an old flame of Raza’s, as it turns out.  If you’ve read my page before you already know how I feel about Claudia Cardinale. Or you could just look at a picture:

THE PROFESSIONALS is a great big-screen action classic, three-times Oscar-nominated, with some fascinating sociopolitical subtext.  Writer-director Richard Brooks (BLACKBOARD JUNGLE, CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF, IN COLD BLOOD) adapted Frank O’Rourke’s novel for screen with the legendary Conrad Hall (COOL HAND LUKE, BUTCH CASSIDY & THE SUNDANCE KID, FAT CITY, AMERICAN BEAUTY) believably and beautifully shooting California for Mexico.  The movie works just fine on the level of supreme entertainment, but if you read Richard Slotkin’s Gunfighter Nation, as I did when I was lucky enough to learn from him as an undergraduate, it becomes apparent that THE PROFESSIONALS is reflective of the era during which it was made.  The Professionals are comparable to the American Green Berets, an elite military-trained fighting force, who are sent into a foreign nation for dubious reasons and in the course of their adventure they become disillusioned with their mission.  Very potent stuff, but it’s buried under a rollicking mainstream Western facade.  The subtext is there if you want to think about it, but you can also just sit back and enjoy.

Since I’m a huge Robert Ryan fan, I do wish he had a little more shine in the movie.  According to some interviews on the Blu-Ray, Ryan wasn’t well during filming, which could explain it.  (I’m also a Woody Strode fan but unfortunately Woody Strode being underused in a film is somewhat more routine occurrence.)  Ryan and Strode, as the horse wrangler and the team scout, are really playing strong support to the buddy-movie pairing of Marvin and Lancaster, the gunman and the dynamite setter.  Ryan does play an interesting contrast to his frequent noir antihero persona, though.  This is one of his most thoroughly decent roles – Ryan’s horse expert is tender and protective of every horse the group encounters.  He’s one of those guys who seems to care more about animals than people, and who can blame him, in a movie where one species is clearly more consistently trustworthy than the other.  Many of this movie’s heroes have abandoned ideals for commerce when it begins.  What makes the movie ultimately so thrilling and rewarding, then, even more than the banter and the gunfights, is to watch them rediscover actual virtue.  That these Professionals end up refusing a hefty payday for the right reasons and manage to stick it to a corporate fatcat in the process is arguably even more satisfying today than in 1966.  Besides, who can resist the following exchange:

“You BASTARD!”

“Yes sir. In my case an accident of birth. But you sir, you’re a self-made man.”

THE PROFESSIONALS showed tonight at 92Y Tribeca but I didn’t get this piece up in time.  So:

Call me a bastard on Twitter:  @jonnyabomb

Best Movies Of Last Year: THE GREY (2012).

“There are no atheists in foxholes,” as the old saying goes. But what about in wolves’ dens? It’s a question I never knew I had. Just one of many reasons why THE GREY, the new thriller from co-writer/director Joe Carnahan, is such an uncommon and splendid achievement is that it asks (and answers) that question.

I had been sold on this movie from the minute I was made aware that it was to be a survival drama where the great actor Liam Neeson faces off against a pack of hungry wolves. “Herman Melville meets Jack London meets Hemingway meets wolves meets Liam Neeson’s fists.”  That movie would have been just fine.  But this movie is twice as good.  It’s got all the thrills and chills you could hope and expect out of that brilliantly direct premise — but on top of that, THE GREY is one of the more profound, dynamic, and uncompromising illustrations of existentialism I have seen on a movie screen in quite a while. This film goes deep — like “straight to the bone, through the ribcage, all the way through to the soul” deep.

For those of us who have been starving for brutal, bruising, uncompromising American cinema, THE GREY is proof of life.

That was what I had started to write in January 2012. Here’s what I finally wrote about the movie in December for Daily Grindhouse:

THE GREY marked its territory in my number one spot all the way back in January of 2012, and fiercely warded off all comers with teeth bared.  I love all the movies in my top ten and there are plenty still which almost made the list, but THE GREY is the one I really took to heart.  For one thing, I am ready to go to the mat on the argument that the storytelling and filmmaking in THE GREY is at least as exemplary as any of the year’s more award-friendly critical darlings.

The score by Marc Streitenfeld is gorgeous and heartbreaking. The cinematography by Masanobu Takayanagi is crisply delineated and winter-clear.  The script by Ian Mackenzie Jeffers & Joe Carnahan is perfectly-paced and indelible.  And Joe Carnahan’s direction is world-class.  I was a huge fan of Carnahan’s movie NARC, and I think his SMOKIN’ ACES and THE A-TEAM, while surely on the cartoony side of the action-movie spectrum, show action chops on par with the best of ‘em.  I have been following and enjoying his work for a long time, but THE GREY makes Carnahan a canon filmmaker in my eyes.

I was lucky enough to see THE GREY a month early, so I could watch with fascination as it was received by the public.  Considering how thoughtful a film it is, all the simplistic and reductive “Liam Neeson punches wolves!” jokes were almost obscene.  Some of the marketing did seem eager to group THE GREY alongside the Liam Neeson action-thrillers of the last few years, and obviously this is a different thing entirely.  Interestingly, some religious groups embraced the movie, although I’m not sure it’s saying what they may want it to be saying.  And some environmental groups were bothered by the portrayal of the wolves, which is a well-intentioned complaint but misses the point.  First of all, Liam Neeson’s character views the wolves above all with a kind of respect.  But more importantly:  The same way FLIGHT isn’t really about a plane, THE GREY isn’t exactly about the wolves.

Think about the title.  Did you look at the wolves in that movie?  Didn’t look all that gray to me.  They looked almost black.  They blended in and out of that night with ease.  These aren’t real-world wolves.  These are something else.  The wolves in THE GREY are an engine, relentlessly forcing the sands through the hourglass.  In my reading of the title, “The Grey” refers to that space between existence and non-existence, between the white of snow and the black of death. No, this isn’t a movie about wolves.  This is a movie about mortality.

Many fans of the movie have noted how THE GREY structurally resembles a typically horror movie, as the cast of characters are gradually winnowed away, and maybe that’s true, but in that case I’ve never seen a horror movie that treats the ranks of the culled with such care.  Most of the characters who die in THE GREY get sent out on a moment of dignity, even grace, or at least as much as can be mustered.  (There is one major exception, maybe the most upsetting death in the entire film, but that is the one that prompts the film’s most important emotional moment, so it’s not much of an exception after all.)  This is a movie that shows many people dying, yet it is the rare such movie that happens to value life.  That is one reason why I am struck where it matters by THE GREY.

There are also personal reasons.  I’ve spent the last four years attending more funerals than I wanted to attend in a lifetime.  Without any exaggeration and in a relatively short time, I’ve lost half my nearest and dearest.  I’ve been living with death.  This movie is what that feels like.  Wolves and winter – that’s all just visual trappings meant to illustrate an idea.  The point is, there may come a time in your life when everybody you know starts dropping like flies at the hands of some relentless cosmic flyswatter, and then what are you gonna do?  Pray to God?  Good luck there.  Worth a try.  Maybe He answers your prayers.  Maybe He doesn’t answer.  Probably he doesn’t answer.  Now you’ve got a choice to make.  Or maybe there isn’t a choice at all.

“Fuck it.  I’ll do it myself.”  That isn’t a renunciation.  That is, in fact, a profoundly spiritual decision.  This movie illustrates that concept so beautifully that if I had the tears to do it, I’d cry them.  I thank this movie for existing in 2012, and I thank Joe Carnahan and his cast and crew for braving the cold to make it.

For further reading:

My Top Ten Of 2012

THE A-TEAM

THE DARK KNIGHT RISES

@jonnyabomb

Now on @DailyGrindhouse: SOUTHERN COMFORT (1981).

 

Walter Hill has a new movie coming out this week called BULLET TO THE HEAD.  I’m cautiously looking forward to it, since I am a fan of many of Walter Hill’s movies.  This new one can go any of a few different ways, but I’m on board for any movie that gives sizable roles to Sarah Shahi and Sung Kang.  (You’ll know those names better someday soon.)

Here’s what I had to say about 48 HRS.,  STREETS OF FIRE, and TRESPASS.  And as of today, for Daily Grindhouse, I have had some words about SOUTHERN COMFORT:

 

>>>READ IT HERE!!!<<<

 

And I’m always reachable here:  @jonnyabomb

 

 

Now on @DailyGrindhouse: THE MAN WITH THE IRON FISTS (2012).

I can’t stand repetition.  I certainly don’t like to repeat myself.  But I put a lot of work into my thoughts on THE MAN WITH THE IRON FISTS, and I know that some people who follow me on Demon’s Resume might like to have alerts on when I write elsewhere, so I wanted y’all to know about my piece for Daily Grindhouse.  I tried hard to make it worth your time!

Click here to read about >>> THE MAN WITH THE IRON FISTS <<< !!!

And all challenges may be directed to me on Twitter:  @jonnyabomb

And now here are pictures of Jamie Chung:

From The Archives: THE FUNERAL (1996).

Abel Ferrara is a controversial cult director who is probably best known for his most notorious movie, Bad Lieutenant.  That’s the one that’s supposed to be super-violent and is widely-feared for prominently featuring full-frontal Harvey Keitel.  I’ve never felt the need to voluntarily submit myself to that image, but I have seen Ferrara’s nearly-as-infamous film, King Of New York.  And I liked that one, but not nearly as much as the Notorious B.I.G. did.  (Biggie called himself “the black Frank White,” after Christopher Walken’s character.)  Ferrara also directed the pilot to Michael Mann’s excellent 1980s TV series, Crime Story.

Knowing all that, though, I still didn’t know what to expect of The Funeral.

 Turns out it’s a New York crime story, set in the 1930s, and centers around three first-generation Italian brothers.  The brothers are played by Christopher Walken, Chris Penn, and Vincent Gallo.  Their father appears briefly in flashbacks, but I have to assume that there were three very different mothers with the incongruous mugs on that trio.

The three are all members of a local crime family, but Walken is contemplative and a family man, whereas Penn also runs a bar, and Gallo sneaks out to radical union meetings.  At the outset of the film, Gallo is in a coffin, and his two older brothers don’t yet know the identity of his killer. (Don’t read Wikipedia’s entry on this movie, by the way; they have it wrong.)

The Funeral is an increasingly interesting movie as it progresses, because while it starts as a loosely-structured collection of scenes – many of which not dissimilar to familiar mob movie clichés – it delves deep into the Walken and Penn characters and comes up with very much worthwhile results.  Chris Penn, in particular, makes the movie absolutely necessary to watch, as he takes the traditional Sonny Corleone hothead character and turns it into a heartbreaking, horrific portrayal of real mental illness.  It’s an amazing showcase for a much-missed character actor.  And who knew the guy had such an incredible singing voice?

In fact, the acting bench is stacked way deep with great character actors.  Annabella Sciorra, who also produced along with Russell Simmons (!), plays Walken’s wife.  Isabella Rossellini plays Penn’s.  Gretchen Mol is Gallo’s widow.  Benicio Del Toro has a substantial early role as a rival gangster who may or may not have been behind the trigger.  John Ventimiglia, the never-fortunate Artie Bucco from The Sopranos, plays Walken’s consigliere.  Victor Argo, a great New York actor who Scorsese fans will immediately recognize, has a brief role as a spooky enforcer.  Frank John Hughes (Wild Bill from Band Of Brothers) has a similar role.  David Patrick Kelly (you know him from The Warriors) has one great scene as a union speaker.  Edie Falco (Carmella!) has a cameo in there.  So does Joey G (Vito!).

So yeah, if you’re a character-actor aficionado like I am, The Funeral is like a piñata full of goodness.  David Chase obviously saw it.

 

I ended up digging on The Funeral, but I’m not sure if I’m a newly-converted Ferrara fan, exactly.  Then again, Ferrara’s upcoming project, Jekyll and Hyde, was announced not too long ago, and it’s supposedly a re-envisioning of The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, starring Forest Whitaker as Jekyll and 50 Cent as Hyde.  I will absolutely watch that movie.

 

 

Come find me on Twitter:  @jonnyabomb

Cult Classics: DILLINGER (1973).

For all those who enjoyed Michael Mann’s PUBLIC ENEMIES, and even those who didn’t, here’s a somewhat lesser-known treat: John Milius’s DILLINGER, from 1973, starring Warren Oates as bankrobber John Dillinger and Ben Johnson as lawman Melvin Purvis.

There have been countless cinematic treatments of the Dillinger story, but this one is one of the most purely entertaining.  It was written and directed by John Milius, a contemporary of Spielberg’s and Scorsese’s whose work is a bit of a fascination of mine.  Milius co-wrote a DIRTY HARRY sequel (MAGNUM FORCE) and some scenes in JAWS, and directed the first (and best) CONAN THE BARBARIAN movie, among other things.  He was also the inspiration for John Goodman’s character in THE BIG LEBOWSKI.  So anything from the mind of Milius is worth parsing, to me.

As Michael Mann’s newer Dillinger movie illustrates, a cops-and-robbers flick is always at its best when it’s about two equal but opposing forces.  Milius’s movie has two incredible character actors centering his Dillinger film.  Warren Oates is best known to younger generatiosn as Sgt. Hulka from STRIPES, but in the decades before that, he built up a stunning career of dirty, often ugly character actor performances.  He’s sure not the prettier Dillinger that Johnny Depp created, but equally compelling.

Against him is the eternal Ben Johnson, the definition of a veteran actor who worked for the majority of the twentieth century.  Johnson was a large and amiable figure in literally tons of movies, mostly Westerns, mostly for John Ford.  He’s not prettier than Bale, but he smiles way more often.  Casting Oates and Johnson against each other is as watchable and as American as fireworks on the Fourth of July.  For fans of great movies, the casting has an added punch since only a couple years earlier,  in 1969, Oates and Johnson played the marauding Gorch brothers in Sam Peckinpah’s masterpiece, THE WILD BUNCH.  That cinematic memory only informs the experience of watching DILLINGER – to fans of THE WILD BUNCH, DILLINGER may carry a vague feeling of brother-against-brother.

Like Mann’s movie thirty (!) years later, the earlier DILLINGER film is full of still-recognizable supporting actors, such as singer Michelle Phillips as Dillinger’s girlfriend Billie Frechette, Harry Dean Stanton as Homer Van Meter, Clint Eastwood regular (and Juliette’s dad) Geoffrey Lewis as Pete Pierpont, and Cloris Leachman as Anna Sage, the low-down whore who sells Dillinger out.  Oh, and a very young Richard Dreyfuss as Baby Face Nelson.  You haven’t really enjoyed a manly gangster picture until you’ve enjoyed the spectacle of Warren Oates smacking around Richard Dreyfuss.

As that aforementioned pleasure implies, this is definitely more of a guy’s guy movie; whereas PUBLIC ENEMIES was constructed much more as a romantic story.  But for fans of guy’s guy movies, DILLINGER is almost a necessity, and anyone at all who enjoyed PUBLIC ENEMIES will find the similarities and contrasts to be compelling.

DILLINGER is tough to find on DVD and rarely screens anywhere, but Netflix occasionally has it.  Sometimes it’s available, sometimes it’s not.  (Netflix and DILLINGER apparently have a stormy relationship.)  Well worth the effort.

This piece was originally written and posted on July 7th, 2009.  I stand by my recommendation.

On Twitter:  @jonnyabomb

Now on @DailyGrindhouse: LAWLESS (2012).

LAWLESS is a couple weeks old now, but it’s still way worth talking about.  It’s not to be confused with FLAWLESS, the Philip-Seymour-Hoffman-in-a-dress movie, nor is it to be confused with the upcoming DREDD movie, which as we all know is guaranteed to have a surplus of law.

Here’s what I said about LAWLESS before I saw it…

WETTEST COUNTY was on my list of 50 most eagerly-awaited movies of the year.   But it’s not called that anymore, though.  Now it goes by the handle LAWLESS, a much more generic title which sounds a little cooler after knowing it was generously bestowed upon the movie by none other than Terrence Malick.  Whatever it’s called, it’s a John Hillcoat movie, which after THE PROPOSITION and The ROAD, promises good things.  I’m definitely getting a less-artsy, more-mainstream PUBLIC ENEMIES vibe from the new trailer, but that doesn’t strike me personally as a deterrent.

Check out the trailer, it made LAWLESS travel that much higher on my want-to-see-now meter:

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Now, to read what I had to say about LAWLESS after seeing it (spoiler warning: it’s a lot of very nice things), you’ll have to click over to Daily Grindhouse:

>>>LAWLESS!!!<<<

And make damn sure you check out that soundtrack:

1980s Action-Movie Henchmen Come Alive!

   

   

   

I got a new sketchbook today, so this has been happening on my Twitter ever since.

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AL LEONG.

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BRION JAMES.

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ROBERT Z’DAR.

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More to come as the day drags ever on into night….

Follow the madness on Twitter:  @jonnyabomb

My Top 50 Movies Of All Time (At This Exact Moment In Time.)

And we’re back!  Ready for round two.  Inspired again by my friend-in-movies at Rupert Pupkin Speaks, I’m re-presenting and reshuffling my top fifty movies of all time.  “Reshuffling” sounds a little more extreme than what I’ve done here — most of the titles remain the same, and the order isn’t much different.  But there’s a fair amount of new blood, and I’ve updated the links to any movies I’ve written about at length (those are bolded in red.) 

This list is absolutely subject to change, so keep watching this space, but while you’re at it, don’t forget to keep watching the skies.

1. THE GOOD, THE BAD, & THE UGLY (1966).

2. GHOSTBUSTERS (1984).

3. DAWN OF THE DEAD (1978).

4.  ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST (1968).

5.  UNFORGIVEN (1992).

6.  KING KONG (1933).

7.  PREDATOR (1987).

8.  MANHUNTER (1986).

9.  BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA (1986).

10.  MOTHER, JUGS & SPEED (1976).

11.  John Carpenter’s THE THING (1982).

12.  HEAT (1995).

13.  FREAKS (1932).

14. JAWS (1975).

15.  Berry Gordy’s THE LAST DRAGON (1985).

16.  THE WILD BUNCH (1969).

17.  SHAFT (1971).

18.  BEVERLY HILLS COP (1984).

19.  THE BIG GUNDOWN (1966).

20.  SEA OF LOVE (1989).

21. RAISING ARIZONA (1987).

22.  EVIL DEAD 2 (1987).

23.  OUT OF SIGHT (1998).

24.  THE INSIDER (1999).

25.  ALLIGATOR (1980).

26.  COLLATERAL (2004).

27.  THE GREAT SILENCE (1968).

28.  AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON (1981).

29.  MY DARLING CLEMENTINE (1946).

30.  CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON (1954).

31. PRIME CUT (1972).

32. WATERMELON MAN (1970).

33.  GROSSE POINTE BLANK (1997).

34.  25th HOUR (2002).

35.  COFFY (1973).

36. QUICK CHANGE (1990).

37.  MAGNOLIA (1999).

38.  HANNIE CAULDER (1971).

39. ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK (1981).

40.  48 HRS. (1982).

41.  GOODFELLAS (1990).

42.  SHOGUN ASSASSIN (1980).

43.  PURPLE RAIN (1984).

44.  THE UNHOLY THREE (1925).

45.  TRUE GRIT (2010).

46.  THE PROFESSIONALS (1966).

47.  VIOLENT CITY aka THE FAMILY (1973).

48.  THE HIT (1984).

49.  EMPEROR OF THE NORTH POLE (1973).

50.  ATTACK THE BLOCK (2011).

50 1/2.  The five-minute skeleton swordfight in JASON & THE ARGONAUTS (1963).

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And that’s that…. for now.

For a little bit more all the time, find me on Twitter:  @jonnyabomb

Screenings in LA: THE GREAT SILENCE (1968) @Cinefamily!

If you’ve seen Sergio Leone’s THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY, then congratulations!  You’ve seen the greatest movie ever.  But even if you’ve seen every Western that Sergio Leone made (which you really ought to), you’ve still only scratched the surface of the vast reserve of wonderfulness that is Italian Westerns.  Another Sergio – surname Corbucci – made some of the best-regarded of those movies.

Sergio Corbucci’s THE GREAT SILENCE is about a mute gunslinger nicknamed “Silence” (Jean-Louis Trintignant, maybe not a household name but a terrific actor and still starring in major movies at 82), who tries to help a small community who have been besieged by a band of vicious criminals, led by the cooly genocidal bounty hunter “Loco”, played by the ever-disturbing Klaus Kinski.  Loco collects dead bodies like a hunter collects pelts, while Silence only kills in self-defense – to be fair, he does provoke a lot of dickheads to draw down.  That way it’s legal.  Silence kills bad guys.  Loco is the worst guy.  Inevitably they’re going to meet up.  Sounds like a movie we may have seen a few times before, right?

Not quite.

The main element that drew me to THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY when I first saw it, the element that got me into Italian Westerns for life, and the element that THE GREAT SILENCE has in abundance, is the otherworldly quality of it all.  There’s a beautifully weird disconnect that happens when Italian filmmakers use international actors to shoot stories about the American West in (usually) Spain.  THE GREAT SILENCE is one Italian Western that doubles down on the otherworldliness.  The story takes place in Utah, on a wooded frontier blanketed with snow – even the horses have a hell of a time getting anywhere.  The characters are bundled up in layers of animal hides, brown and grey spots in an oppressive blanket of whiteness.  And the score by Ennio Morricone is one of the most haunting you’ll ever hear, even by the haunting standards set by the maestro.

THE GREAT SILENCE will stick in your guts, and that’s good because it leaves you with a few things to think about.  Corbucci wasn’t the most political of Italian-Western directors (that’d be the third Sergio, Sollima), but there is some clear subtext here if you’re interested in looking for it.  It may or may not mean much that the voiceless hero is a Frenchman – maybe Trintignant was just plain the best guy for the job – but I’d say it certainly means something that a blond, blue-eyed German is the monster of the piece, and Loco’s every action in this film bear out that hunch.  His monstrousness is familiar, is all I’m saying.

Moreover, it says plenty that the romantic interest, Pauline the vengeful widow who sets Silence on his collision course with Loco, who is the man who killed her husband, is a black woman – Vonetta McGee, who went on to star in several grindhouse-friendly films including BLACULA,DETROIT 9000, andSHAFT IN AFRICA, and in my well-educated opinion is only second to Claudia Cardinale in the ranks of most beautiful women ever to headline a “spaghetti” Western.  Race isn’t an issue to Silence, who proves his open mind by engaging in probably one of the earliest examples of interracial love scenes on film, but it most certainly is to Loco, who, in addition to his many other crimes, is blatantly racist.  Corbucci couldn’t be drawing the line between good and evil any more clearly, which is why the movie ultimately becomes quite literally a punch in the heart zone.

Non-spoiler warning: THE GREAT SILENCE has probably THE down ending of all time.  I’m not going to get into it, but trust me on this one.  It’s almost unbearably sad, but it’s also resolutely unique and entirely unforgettable.  If you think you can handle the heartache, then I couldn’t recommend this movie any more highly.

THE GREAT SILENCE is screening from Sunday September 9^th through Tuesday September 11^th at Cinefamily in Los Angeles.  This is the world’s only surviving 35mm print.  If you want to see this movie theatrically, this is the time.

@jonnyabomb

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