DAY 15:
Un par de asesinos (1970) - Director: Rafael Romero Marchent - 4/10
Whenever I see Chris Huerta now, I have flashbacks from Fat Brothers of Trinity and I shudder in utter trepidation (thankfully he gets hanged fairly early on). As for the film itself, it does look good and combines comedy and serious western reasonably well, however, it appears a little disjointed on account of the storytelling being destitute of focus, which effects the muddled structure. I can’t put my finger on what it is exactly that makes the film feel so distant and indifferent;
I guess it is sporadically difficult to follow the storyline in virtue of how swiftly the flick leapfrogs between multiple locations and characters which in turn induces the tale to progress in a rather choppy fashion and divests individual sequences and major plot developments of their impact and resonance; basically a lot of the crucial scenes are cut short and then they fail to leave a mark in one’s memory, effectuating the hazy focus. Garko and Spoletini have some good chemistry, which offsets the said faults to some extent, but none of that can completely compensate for the somewhat tenuous writing and the feeble narration.
La sfida dei MacKenna (1970) - Director: León Klimovsky - 7/10
One of those rare spaghetti westerns in which dialogues are sedulously worked out to the extent that they are witty and smart, characters are veritably three-dimensional and the story does not feel like a contrived mock-up of a plot intended for providing an unobtrusive background to action sequences rather than recounting a concrete tale as such like it is the case here. The narrative has a proper flow to it, consecutive scenes relate to one another and all serve an overarching purpose, resulting in a highly immersive viewing experience and generally higher class filmmaking.
Long story short, this feels like an actual movie with properly delineated characters and an actualized blueprint as to film’s overall destination. I do not understand why it is not more renowned; I guess it is a lot more drama-driven than other genre examples, but it works just the same, features some of the most fleshed out characters you could ask for in a western of this kind, some traces of noir motifs and Bobby Woods puts on one of his strongest performances too; there is not a single dull moment either and everything sort of fits together, greatly benefitting from film’s tight focus and high production values. One of the few titles I would not mind revisiting in the not so distant future; the mere fact that it has not been released officially yet is a bona fide travesty.