Rent The Mercenary (1968)

Carry On Up The Revolution! - The Mercenary review by Count Otto Black

Sergio Corbucci and Franco Nero will always be best known as the director and star of "Django", which was essentially "A Fistful Of Dollars" remade with added ultra-violence. Here they try something similar by more or less ripping off "The Good, The Bad And The Ugly" with added Surrealism. Franco Nero is bizarrely cast as a Polish mercenary, mainly so that he can get away with wearing clothes and facial hair appropriate for European high society (apparently he's a friend of the composer Frederic Chopin) in revolutionary Mexico. Though at one point he finds an excuse to disguise himself as an angel, in a scene which also involves a crucified bearded lady with a halo and a machine gun. I'm not making this up, honest!

Talking of strangely dressed characters, according to legend, Jack Palance liked to buy his movie costumes, but after "Shane" led to him being horribly typecast he ended up with far too many identical black evil cowboy outfits. So when Sergio Corbucci approached him to play yet another western baddie, he asked if his character could somehow wear a variety of stylish tuxedos for a change. Which is why the psychopathic Curly is a flamboyant homosexual, complete with a green carnation in his buttonhole like Oscar Wilde and a boyfriend called Sebastian. Like I said, this is NOT your usual western! Did I mention the gunfighting clown? Yes, really...

It's not a perfect movie by any means. Tony Musante, a second-rate actor who would later be incredibly annoying in "The Pope Of Greenwich Village", is nowhere near as bad here in the clichéd rôle of the selfishly anarchic Mexican who eventually learns the true meaning of revolution, but he's still a wee bit irritating. Franco Nero's amoral Pole isn't really a character at all, just a string of plot devices whose personality changes at random intervals to give everybody else a reason to like or dislike him as required by the script. The chaotic, massively destructive action is magnificent whenever it gets properly going, but it flags in the middle, presumably because blowing up a town every ten minutes would have been too expensive if they'd kept doing it throughout the movie. And Jack Palance must have been even more expensive, since Curly is barely in the film compared with the other two, though he almost manages to steal it anyway. We could have done with less Tony Musante and more Jack Palance, the only western villain I can think of who likes killing people so much that he's obviously sexually aroused by it.

Still, if you don't mind a western featuring terrible dubbing, variable acting, a complete absence of logic, clowns, and a Jack Palance nude scene, this barking mad excuse for Italians to cause as much damage to the scenery and each other as they possibly can should certainly keep you entertained for an hour and three-quarters. And it's got one of Ennio Morricone's better scores too.

Big Machine Guns, Mowing Down Mexican Soldier...more than a little familiar. - The Mercenary review by Strovey

The Mercenary, that was originally called A Professional Gun in the UK is a Zapata Western set in the period of cinematic history when the Italians were seemingly churning these films out daily. Due to this, your chances of getting a similar story of questionable quality were high and when you get a good film with an interesting story you notice it more. This is the case with The Mercenary which took portions of its story from Guns for San Sebastian, and itself was soon remade and unfairly compared with Companeros also made by Corbucci and also starring Franco Nero and Jack Palance, these films really do sit it an odd and unique place in film history.

The film is very violent, if you count the number of people shot, blown-up, stabbed with pitchforks and mown down by machine-guns the figure is stratospheric, but it is not graphic. Corbucci pulls away from most of the extreme violence, the pitch-fork stabbing is shown off-screen, as is the castration, fortunately. A hand-grenade blown up head is shown, but even that is bloodless and what blood we do see looks more like melted wax than blood.

There are comedic moments, a sort of romance, and it all flies along at a fair old pace, so whatever you think of what you are watching, it should not bore you unduly or let your mind wander, unless you really are that type of person or hate these films.

The main protagonists are all good in their roles. However, Franco Nero is about as Polish as me, Tony Musante is charismatic and slightly naïve Paco and the two have a believable chemistry, Jack Palance is Jack Palance. He effortlessly breezes through his role as the dandy and utterly psychopathic Curly.

What is interesting to see is the extremely attractive actor Giovanna Ralli is given something more than just being extremely attractive eye-candy. She joins the Revolution and has a bit more agency than her obvious good looks. The other baddies, Eduardo Fajardo the chief among them, behave as they always do in these films, laughing uncontrollably, gurning and looking evil, so that anyone within a country mile would instantly know they are evil.

The film gives Nero his usual ‘real’ partner a great big machine gun that at some point he must carry around whilst killing a lot of people, in real life absolutely impossible, but it was his trademark and these films' trademark.

The landscapes and deserted outdoors look as you would imagine Mexico and the States looked like at the turn of the century and the towns used fit perfectly. Always a big strong point in these Westerns. Add in the mercurial music of Ennio Morricone and you basically have a film that is worth watching no matter what is happening in the story.

Politics with machine guns - The Mercenary review by HW

A very similar plot to another political spaghetti-western ‘A Bullet for the General’ (1966), in which a cool, money-motivated white mercenary (Franco Nero, the original Django) teams up with a lively Mexican bandit/revolutionary (Tony Musante). This unlikely duo both fight with and against each other in order to make money from the violent situation around them during the Mexican Revolution of the early 20th century. You’ve also got Jack Palance hunting these crooks down in a bizarre villainous role. Tarantino was clearly a fan of this, as he surely borrowed elements from the plot for his own films such as ‘Django Unchained’. I also recognised bits of the ‘Mercenary’ score (by the maestro Ennio Morricone) from ‘Kill Bill 2’ and ‘Inglorious Basterds’. This film may be worth watching not just for the frequent, thrilling action but for the Leone-style duel in a bullfighting arena, enlivened by Morricone’s epic music.