"The Mercenary" (1968)

"The Mercenary" (1968), directed by Sergio Corbucci, 3.5 stars

“Better a live clown than a dead hero” – Sergei Kowalski

In this lesser known 1960s Italian Western, a Polish mercenary and a peasant turned bandit strike up an on-again, off-again relationship during the Mexican Revolution.  Sergei Kowalski (Franco Nero) narrates in flashback how he joined forces with Paco Roman (Tony Musante) and his gang of ambivalent, bank-robbing revolutionaries and, for a fee, teaches them how to up their game, ultimately significantly raising both the bar as well as the bounty on Paco’s head.  In the meantime, a malevolently lethal saloon owner nicknamed Curly (Jack Palance) intercedes when he thinks that there’s money to be made by intervening in a deal Sergei has made with a local mine owner.  Things go wrong for all concerned, pitting Curly in turns against Sergei and Paco as an homage to if not a complete rip-off of “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.”  However, in this film, none of the lead actors or the characters they portray is nearly as strong as their counterparts in the Eastwood, Van Cleef, and Wallach classic.  As a result, the story of a peon bandito initially mistaken for and then actually evolving into a revolutionary leader doesn’t grab the audience the way it might were it better cast and better crafted with richly-drawn characters.

Fortunately, acting alone isn’t often the make-it-or-break-it component in an Italian Western.  There’s also action and angles, of which there is much on display here.  Director Sergio Corbucci, in deference to or in strict imitation of Sergio Leone, uses cinematography that is self-consciously larger than life.  It’s rife with zooms, and it has more than its fair share of elaborate yet fluid camera movements, canted angles, quick cuts, and extreme close-ups.  All of these characteristics are signatories of the genre.

 Also contributing to the film’s extremely operatic quality is the playful score by the iconic Ennio Morricone and Bruno Nicolai (who also worked with Leone on "For a Few Dollars More" and "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly"), which interconnects and also punctuates the various violent interludes:  the hangings, firing squads, machine-gun massacres and more personal, yet equally casual murders.  Sometimes the music soars; just as often it sneers.  It also whistles, whipcracks, and wails; and at one point, during a climactic shootout, it bursts into a fully-orchestrated bolero.  The combination of sights and sounds are a feast for the eyes and ears, and though they outsize and outshine the plot and performances (or, perhaps, because they do), I enjoyed the film quite a bit.