Chuck Connors is the man with no name. The smiling one, though.For a guy that watches tons of spaghetti westerns and (and not so often, WWII films), I've developed an animadversity toward Enzo G. Castellari. Castellari is a extremely prolific director who has made all sorts of stuff, from westerns to war movies and even "Jaws" rip-offs. All his films have in common is a) they all have action (which is good, I still have to see a boring Castellari film, although I bet that is just a matter of luck) and b) they are rip-offs of better and much more expensive films c) the guy seems to be against his movies having any kind of content (which is bad).
After suffering my way through his so-called masterpiece, "Keoma", I couldn't expect less from this film. After all, it has all the symptoms of going to suck big time. I mean, the plot
is a rehash steals from both "The professionals" and "The good, the bad and the ugly". And it stars Chuck Connors, one of the few Americans that tried to boost their careers by making Euro-westerns.
To my surprise, though, "Kill Them All and Come Back Alone" is easily Castellari's best film. I'd go as far as to say it's a very good film. As I said, it scores zero when it comes to content, but it is surprisingly slick for a Castellari film, and it has so much action that it almost made me feel like like I was watching a Hong Kong movie. It's not only the shootouts, although there's a lot of them too, but also the fistfights. Here when people fight each other, they do it for minutes, and not just two of them. On several occasions you actually get dozens of people on the screen beating the sh*t out of each other. Cool.
And then there's the acting. Connors is not exactly Brando, but at least he tries hard not to copy Eastwood's man without name manierisms. He does smile too much for my taste (it doesn't help that Connors has shark's teeth, I find it too distracting), but he manages to give his character a definite personality. Although he relies on violence when he has to, his main asset seem to be his planning ability, which makes him more cunning than most other SW heroes. The rest of the actors are so-so, but at least they got SW veteran Frank Wolff for the main villain, and he probably gets more screentime than in any of his other westerns combined.
So yes, it's mindless, but it's mindless fun. Even well shot mindless fun, I would say. Give it a try, you won't be disappointed
Kick ass time!
