Now They Call Him Sacramento / I bandoleros della dodicesima ora (Alfonso Balcázar, 1972)

[Mickey13]

Copied from the Spagvemberfest 2023 thread:

@Mickey13

There are several issues blighting the motion picture: firstly, even though the flick is supposed to be yet another Trinity clone, our central duo neither resembles Hill and Spencer in appearance nor in terms of charm and overall charisma; as much as I abhor the Carambola movies, at the very least those flicks got the basics right and did not stray away from the originals too much, the same cannot be argued about this outing. Secondly, most of the jokes simply turn out nugatory, hackneyed and tiresome: neither is there much vim in the way the humor is prefigured and eventually delivered, nor is the said humor particularly inventive or dignified in the first place. Thirdly, the storyline, albeit initially digestible, essentially grinds to a halt in the middle section and then proceeds to flounder towards the climax in a remarkably laggard, cumbersome fashion.

In a certain sense, the composition feels like a compilation of tropes extracted from various subgenre examples and then slapped together in an otiose attempt to cash in on the contemporary comedy hysteria. The story totally runs out of steam and ideas in the second half and in what appears to be a display of scripting helplessness, avails itself of the climax involving razing the entire town to the ground with the use of explosives. None of the aforementioned factors is remedied by Balcazar’s flaccid direction which impassively drifts from one scene to another, framing the action in an utterly nondescript manner. The flick might not be so absolutely loathsome on the face of it, notwithstanding, the want of novel ideas, the languishing narrative in the middle, the sluggish pacing as well as the featureless execution render the film-viewing experience immensely soporific and listless.