Sartana Kills Them All / Un par de asesinos (Rafael Romero Marchent, 1970)

Just finished watching this. Likeable enough in an offbeat manner, but it’s all a bit of a mess, really. An episodic Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid wannabee buddy movie that tries to straddle that no-mans-land between the violent Spags of the sixties and the knockabout slapstick comedy Spags of the seventies but fails to be both, and in trying fails also to be either one thing or the other. The movie features a charming and spirited performance from Guglielmo Spoletini but a phoned-in, almost bored turn from Gianni “SANtana-not-SARtana-even-though-they’re-all-calling-me-SARtana-despite-being-nothing-like-SARtana” Garko, deciding that a vague allusion to Robert Redford in his tassled jacket will suffice. The female love interest was appropriately sexy enough though, as is often the case. Did they all decide to live as a weird trio of lovers at the end? They’ll wind up on Jeremy Kyle, mark my words.

As I said, it’s a light-hearted and easy enough sojourn, I’ll give it that. And the set-pieces, taken in isolation, are rather fun. One section featuring a badass family of nutjob brothers and their hideous crippled patriarch was probably worthy of expansion into a larger (better) movie on its own. But a lack of focus, a lack of direction kept me from truly committing to this movie.

1 Like