Five Before Chaos

Just a quick blurb on another spaghetti western… one that if you are just getting into the genre, you should avoid: Gianfranco Parolini’s ‘Sabata.’ The film stars Lee Van Cleef, the hawklike-looking dude from Sergio Leone’s ‘For A Few Dollars More’ and ‘The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly’.

Now, think of all the great things in a Leone film… dramatic cinematography, strong character development, great storylines with complex subtexts, etc. Now hold that thought and savor it, because you’ll find none of that in this movie. It plays like a bad early 60’s American western.

The story involves a gunfighter named Sabata, played by Van Cleef, who foils a large bank robbery, secretly set up by the wealthy pillars of the community. He teams up with some hipster dude named Banjo, a guy who has a gun built into the neck of his banjo and looks and talks like he could’ve stepped out of any U.S. tv show from 1967 playing ‘the hippie’, and some mute acrobatic guy, and they take on the baddies. One of the lead villans is a strange androgynous character who overacts at every available opportunity.

Now, I must be honest.. I didn’t even finish watching this movie. I was so terminally bored with it, I only made it about 3/4 of the way through. I picked it up because I think Lee Van Cleef is an amazing screen prescence, and I’ve seen him good in other non-Leone spaghettis, such as ‘Death Rides a Horse’. Even his steely-eyed persona doesn’t save this film, it lacks all of the intensity that he brought to his roles in the two Leone films. I could care less about what happened to any of the characters in the film, or how it even ended.

Searching around on the net, this film doesn’t get much critical acclaim but gets some pretty ok reviews, nonetheless. There were even two sequels to it, which I’m not going to bother with.

Some more Italian western reviews coming up when I get a chance:
My Name is Nobody
Keoma
Mannaja: A Man Called Blade
They Call Me Trinity

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