Compañeros / Vamos a matar, compañeros (Sergio Corbucci, 1970)

Milian said Franco Nero was the best human being he has ever met. I never have any problems with Milian. I’d say he is just not exactly…humble? Is thatthe write word to use?

Yes, humble would be the right word.
But then why should he be. I always think in these cases of what Brian Clough (a football manager in England famous for being an outspoken big head) said once when accused of being conceited. It went something like “It’s not not conceited to admit you are good at something if you are.” ;D
Brian was a big head of course but he was also very good at what he did. Possibly the best. And being outspoken about it also made him more entertaining.

Heheh, i’ve watched one interview with Milan and i probably won’t watch anymore. It’s certainly his perogative to be less than humble, i just don’t need to see it. Conversely, exceptions made for RUN MAN RUN, i do like Milan in everything i’ve seeen him in.

I think Milian mentions this at the beginning of Companeros when he’s discussing his background as he shines the general’s shoes, but is he called “El Basco” because he is a Basque who moved to Mexico or because he wears that beret the whole time? Or is this a clever little pun because both are applicable?

He is called Vasco because of the hat.

Right, yes ‘v’ as ‘b’ in Spanish, so in Italian it would be “Il Basco” I assume?

However, I am still confused because in Italian “Basco” means “beret” and also “Basque”, while in Spanish “Vasco” only means “Basque” and not “beret” (or maybe the Spanish dictionaries I checked are not adequate).

Ah right.

[quote=“Phil H, post:122, topic:68”]Yes, humble would be the right word.
But then why should he be. I always think in these cases of what Brian Clough (a football manager in England famous for being an outspoken big head) said once when accused of being conceited. It went something like “It’s not not conceited to admit you are good at something if you are.” ;D
Brian was a big head of course but he was also very good at what he did. Possibly the best. And being outspoken about it also made him more entertaining.[/quote]

I don’t have any problems with people admitting they’re good at something, but I do find people who are full of themselves to be rather hard to be around. I find that this mindset usually goes beyond the thing they are good at, and carries over into every aspect of life… Of course, I can’t make that judgement about an actor I have no personal experience with, but the interviews certainly annoy me about as much as this type of person I describe…

Spot on !

[quote=“Phil H, post:122, topic:68”]Yes, humble would be the right word.
But then why should he be. …“It’s not conceited to admit you are good at something if you are.” ;D[/quote]

You should be expecting this kind of a response from me, Phil my brother! ha ha!

But, I really do not think Milian is as good an actor as he thinks he is. I do not think he is without talent, though. I actually think he is a fine actor. He did some wonderful work in several films. But, I think the success he had with some of those films resulted in his buying into his own hype, so to speak. If he was as great, grand, and glorious an actor as he thinks he is he would not have hammed it up so darn much in films like THE WHITE, THE YELLOW AND THE BLACK, SONNY AND JED, and RUN MAN RUN. In those films, which have tons of comedy elements in them, I think Milian plays it too safe by going for the obvious and makes the easy choice to engage in over-the-top mugging and face-pulling. It is just my personal feeling, but I think a better actor would have gone for something a little more challenging, subtle, or certainly less obvious. In the film we are discussing here, I think Milian is somewhere between being brilliant (as he was in THE BIG GUNDOWN, FACE TO FACE, TEPEPA, and to a lesser degree THE BOUNTY KILLER and DJANGO KILL) and ridiculous. That is why I find his performance, and COMPANEROS itself, to be somewhat uneven. Enjoyable, to be sure…but, uneven.

I don’t mind the interviews with Tomas, by the way—in fact, I really enjoy them! I find them entertaining and informative.
And I really don’t hate Milian the way a lot of folks think I do! I just don’t think he is as great an actor as he keeps telling everyone he is!
:wink:

[quote=“Chris_Casey, post:130, topic:68”]You should be expecting this kind of a response from me, Phil my brother! ha ha!

But, I really do not think Milian is as good an actor as he thinks he is. I do not think he is without talent, though. I actually think he is a fine actor. He did some wonderful work in several films. But, I think the success he had with some of those films resulted in his buying into his own hype, so to speak. If he was as great, grand, and glorious an actor as he thinks he is he would not have hammed it up so darn much in films like THE WHITE, THE YELLOW AND THE BLACK, SONNY AND JED, and RUN MAN RUN. In those films, which have tons of comedy elements in them, I think Milian plays it too safe by going for the obvious and makes the easy choice to engage in over-the-top mugging and face-pulling. It is just my personal feeling, but I think a better actor would have gone for something a little more challenging, subtle, or certainly less obvious. In the film we are discussing here, I think Milian is somewhere between being brilliant (as he was in THE BIG GUNDOWN, FACE TO FACE, TEPEPA, and to a lesser degree THE BOUNTY KILLER and DJANGO KILL) and ridiculous. That is why I find his performance, and COMPANEROS itself, to be somewhat uneven. Enjoyable, to be sure…but, uneven.

I don’t mind the interviews with Tomas, by the way—in fact, I really enjoy them! I find them entertaining and informative.
And I really don’t hate Milian the way a lot of folks think I do! I just don’t think he is as great an actor as he keeps telling everyone he is!
;)[/quote]

You’re right Chris. I do expect this response from you. (I’d have put a smiley face here but they seem to have disappeared from the reply options)

In truth, I know what you mean about Milian’s mugging sometimes but I guess I draw the line further along than you. Companeros doesn’t fit into the ‘annoying’ category of Milian performances for me. Now The White, The Yellow and the Black…that’s another story entirely!

Sounds about right. :wink:

I think this is a fine entry in the genre.Got to love the turtle scenes aswell possibly the only Spaghetti Western Film with turtles in.

After watching The Mercenary yesterday on the lovely new Koch release I felt like a rewatch of it’s sister piece was in order.

Based on previous viewings I had always slightly prefered Companeros of the two but as I am well aware that a crap print can often spoil a good film and that my old version of The Mercenary was undoubtedly a crap print I wanted to make a fair comparison. In truth it has only confused matters more as I am now having more trouble than ever separating the two but, at this point in time, I think I am swaying back towards The Mercenary. I still love them both and a nice clean print still doesn’t fix some of the structural problems I have with either film but, on the whole, I am beginning to think The Mercenary is the stronger film.

Who knows though; I’m just as likely to change my mind again next year. :-\

It’s understandably. In this battle I stick with Compañeros. :stuck_out_tongue:

Really enjoyed Companeros, I just bought the Anchor Bay dvd a few weeks ago. Sadly I have not seen The Mercenary yet…I don’t have a multi region dvd player, but that still wouldn’t get past the PAL-NTSC problem right? So it looks like either buying a DVD-R from Cinema De Bizarre, Cultcine, or another site. Or to just download it. I would rather support companies but when films are OOP or not available at all then I don’t feel as bad. Hopefully The Mercenary can get a proper release here in the states one day…that Professional Gun print is said to be awful.

Welcome Brother Ninja Warrior - that Professional Gun print is bad. Full screen and faded. Give it a swerve. I have no problem with Pal-Ntsc, and own region 1 and 2 discs no problem (except on my samshit player, which is unhackable). But you should be able to type a code into your player to make it region free - most can be done. There is a Japanese/stingray/spo version of this film as well, which is damn good. it would be highly unlikely that you would find an original (which goes foe big bucks) but you could always look out for a copy of that. Personally, I’d try and get your machine decoded and get the new version out. Unless anybody has any better ideas?

Actually The Mercenary was released by Koch in the beginning of this month and it was a quite big thing! So I recommend you to buy that one. Welcome to the forum.

EDIT: Ooops, didn’t see that you don’t have a region free player… maybe you could buy the Koch one and make a DVDr out of it ;)?

cool, thanks for the ideas. I will probably just get another dvd player eventually as I need one I can break the coding on or one that will play multi-regions anyway. Also dvd players are cheap nowadays as well.

Normally DVD players have no problems with Pal and NTSC DVDs, only the region code is a problem.

My player can’t be made region free without an expensive hardware change, but I only have one RC1 DVD. But I have a program called Any DVD which you can download for free, which circumvents any region- and copy code. With Any DVD I was able to burn a region free DVD-R of this disc, and as it was a one sided DVD 5 there wasn’t even a loss of quality.

But of course, at first you should check if there is a simple code to make the player region free.

And the Koch disc is a real beauty.