Review of The Big Gundown (1967) by John M — 18 Jan 2012

The Big Gundown is one of the best non-Leone spaghetti westerns. You got Lee Van Cleef, the same year as Leone's The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly; an awesome Ennio Morricone score (Tarantino borrowed much of it for Inglourious Basterds, and you can see why); Tomas Milian as a Mexican bandito who prefers knives to guns (although he's certainly not above using guns); and great direction from Sergio Sollima.

The plot: Lee Van Cleef is Corbett, a legendary bounty hunter. Corbett visits a local powerbroker named Brokston, who gets him to hunt for a Mexican bandito named Cuchilo (Milan), who raped and killed a 12 year old girl (or did he?...).

Lee Van Cleef plays a similar role to Col. Mortimer in Leone's For a Few Dollars More, and he's still cool as hell. Milan is great as the Mexican bandit who, like Eli Wallach's Tuco from The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, gradually reveals himself to be a more intelligent and complex human being than we initially took him for.

The film is well paced with plenty of memorable scenes and great action, and Cuchilo's propensity for knife throwing leads to one of the most preposterous- and, therefor, most awesome- mano-a-mano showdowns in a western. And with the details surrounding the rape and murder in question revealed, the person he's facing off against, and the epic Ennio Morricone score swelling, it's extremely satisfying.