'IL MERCENARIO' (1968) - Sergio Corbucci.

Now this is more like it! A gutsy western directed with great gusto by the venerable Sergio Corbucci with a magnificent cast including: Franco Nero, Tony Musante and Jack Palance. The film's great strengths lay not in fashioning a convoluted plot but in executing rigorous action sequences, a wonderfully exhilarating score by maestro Ennio Morricone and a plethora of full-blooded, delightfully eccentric characterizations. 

Franco Nero cuts a remarkably arrogant swathe as Sergei Kowalski, a marvelously coiffure'd, amoral gun for hire who spends most of the film killing folk with unerring accuracy, all the while drawling out laconic put downs AND effortlessly maintaining a fabulously luxurious mane of immaculate hair! Nero appears to be having a ball with this especially roguish character and that good humour sears through the celluloid. Jack Palance is one of cinema's most singularly vivid performers and here he finds himself resplendent in dark, octogenarian curls playing yet another granite-hearted henchmen with consummate élan! It must be said that whenever I saw him in his grannie syrup meting out the old ultra-violence I almost knackered myself laughing! A more deliciously incongruous villain would be hard to find! and the always likeable Tony Musante excels as the flawed, rumbustious and opportunistic revolutionary whose political and military ineptitude is overshadowed by his rugged good looks and rough house charm. 'il Mercenario' is everything one could want from a spaghetti western, and a whole lot more; this is gang busters entertainment from start to finish, and should be immensely appealing even to those outside the cloistered, fanboy world of the Italian Western. Absolutely first class entertainment!