I thought this one was alright. Nothing special but the great cinematography certainly made it feel fresh even if the script wasnât.
I received my DVD today, around 1.5-3 weeks before schedule but the Amazon sellerâs info was false regarding subtitles since no English were included, and my German reading was too slow this first watching. The image quality of the Koch DVD was fine.
Some trumpet music was good as was the cinematography, but I canât say much more now without my hopefully future better understanding of the dialogue. The plot itself appeared to be rather simple though. The antihero looked a bit old and fragile, and the same actor was a potentate in wheelchair in Mannaja. My feeling or intuition is that Yankee could be another SW rated 6/10 by me.
English subtitles should be available by pressing them from your remote control.
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Ooops, thank you !!! I tried the same button on Sabata yesterday but it didnât work.
But in this case it functioned ! 
The first 30 minutes with English subtitles gave some new flesh on the SW bones, and at least it is more entertaining to know what they were saying. In the following hour the dialogue wasnât that important I believe, but I will wait till tomorrow to watch the rest.
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And today after having watched also the last hour with English subtitles I say this SW has a rather thin plot and with exaggerating emphasis on El Grande Concho.
Its simpleness reminds me of Django The Bastard which also has a very uncomplicated plot and also looks OK.
The start of the Yankee is weaker, a lot of minutes are spent on riding scenes and vain talk, and thereâs too much Leone-imitating zooms. Yet, somewhere in the middle, from a superbly directed one-against-all battle scene in the ruins of an old village, it becomes a much more solid film and keeps that level to the end.
If you consider the context, that it is an Italian film, it is not difficult to recognize the motives. Concho ruling over a remote rural area like a Roman emperor controlling everything that is happening clearly symbolizes the most (in)famous plague of modern Italian society - the mafia. Concho is the undisputed ruler of his territory, the official authority - the sheriff - is puppet, subject to Concho. In his entourage are also a philosopher, a painter, etc., symbols of the infiltration of the mafia into all pores of society, corruption that goes from workers to intellectuals. The fact that Conchoâs throne is in an abandoned church is also not accidental, it is a comment on the connection of the Mafia with the Church. After townspeople anger Concho his punishment is horrible, he sets fire to the whole town as a warning. The only one who can oppose Concho and disrupt such a structure is a mysterious outsider. He has no personal motives (other than a prosaic desire to make money), no score from the past that he has to settle with Concho. We learn nothing about his past during the film, nor the future that awaits him. He is simply a symbol of an external force that purifies a corrupt society. Modeled after Shaneâs prototype, but cynical like Eastwoodâs Man With No Name, at the end of the film without pardon he takes all the government gold that Concho tried to steal for himself and rides off in the sunset (thereâs no way the protagonist of American western would do that - taking of the gold part, not riding off in the sunset).
It can be seen that Brass invested a lot more heart in the second part of the film (which can probably be explained by alleged producerâs intervention in his ideas), especially in action scenes that have a lot of attractive camera work. Philippe Leroy is OK in the title role (there have been a lot of worse lead roles in spaghettis), and Adolfo Celi is great as a Bond-style Iâll-kill-you-later-after-we-play-this-game villain. However, it should be said that the film is not too original. It is yet another spaghetti western with a story taken from Fistful of Dollars. Some things are thrown out (no 2 gangs, only 1, no family with which we empathize), but thereâs the gravedigger and the boy again. The stripping down doesnât help the plot, it wonât be overly intriguing to anyone who wonât look for the subtext.
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Yankee has been updated to the new layout (3.0). Let us know if you can add anything: pictures, posters, trivia, facts, figures, links, etcâŚ
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New poll for this one at the top of the page, for those still interested. 
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