Compañeros

The revolution is under way in Mexico. Yolaf Peterson is a Swedish arms dealer; he has come to sell weapons to a group. Mongo is a guerrilla leader and has the money, but it is in a safe. The only man who knows the combination is a professor, and he is in prison in America. Peterson offers to bring him. He takes a guerrilla called Vasco with him; the man does not trust him and is sent to watch him. The two go north. They find the professor and start back. An American with a wooden hand is after them. Sergio Corbucci directs. Franco Nero plays Peterson, Tomas Milian plays Vasco and Jack Palance the man pursuing them; Fernando Rey is in the cast. It is an Italian, Spanish and German co-production. Ennio Morricone wrote the music. The film belongs to the subgenre called the Zapata western; these productions take the Mexican Revolution as their ground and carry a political argument. Corbucci had made another film like it in the same period and the two are cited together. The matter it treats is political consciousness; both characters act for their own advantage and one chooses a side at the end. The professor carries the argument and opposes violence. The character Jack Palance plays is an opium addict who carries a hawk; that detail is what is most cited. Its limit is structure; it runs long, the register is uneven, and the humour and the political argument weaken each other. Who it is for: viewers who like Italian westerns and Corbucci. Who it is not for: it is long, the violence explicit, and the argument too direct.