The Professionals (1966)

It’s an especially fun movie from a director and cast who are clearly having a good time allowing themselves to let loose.

Funny, strange, confrontational and subversive, this is one of the most interesting experiences you'll have at the cinema this year.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

The plot isn't so bad, but the pace of storytelling is too slow which makes people bored. Certain moments are so obvious and unnecessary for the main plot. I would've fast-forwarded those moments if it was an online streaming. The ending looks like implying a sequel, not sure if this movie will get one

Easily 1 of the best westerns/movies I've ever seen.Lee Marvin is his usual gruff self,and Burt Lancaster is offbeat,and funny.Jack Palance is also good.Would highly recommend this flick.

I really wanted to enjoy The Professionals and I gave this film every opportunity to entertain...but in the end I was not satisfied. This picture is 117 minutes but it seems more like 3.5 hours as the scenes move slowly (except for the gun battles) and the dialogue is stilted and stale. There is a scene in the middle of the picture where Mexican bandit Jack Palance attacks a train filled with Mexican soldiers and a ridiculous blood bath occurs. The scene is shot and acted so casually that the picture briefly dips into farce. Palance walks down a line of sitting prisoners and shots each in the back in such a comical fashion that I actually burst out laughing. This film tries hard to depict light hearted gun battles for some unknown reason. The director Richard Brooks wants us to believe that The Professionals are all people of solid morals even though dozens of people are killed. The premise of the film is 4 tough guys go to Mexico to save Cardinale who is supposedly the kidnapped bride of the much older and always excellent Ralph Bellamy, many people end up dieing before the so-called surprise moral ending. The ending of the film is given away half way through the picture so the ending is not really exciting to anyone who has been paying attention. This acting of this film is made up of Burt Lancaster quickly becoming the lead character and doing his usual routine as the smiling bandit with a heart of gold. Lee Marvin is his usual rough edged character riffing one liners and heavy stares throughout the picture but this is not one of his best works-he seems to sleepwalk through much of the film. Robert Ryan plays a good guy in this picture and as always is understated and excellent and Woody Strode also does good work despite his underwritten character. Claudia Cardinale definitely gives it her all as the constantly enraged Mexican beauty (she pulls it off even though she is actually Italian). Claudia is quite good looking and it is fun to watch her chew-the-scenery with her heavy acting. Overall I give this picture a 5 out of 10 due to its weak script and poor editing...it was shot beautifully and had strong actors but it just doesn't come together and has many slow points. I had hoped for a classic but ended up watching an overlong average Western.

One more classic upon classics that I watched some decades ago, and also a film I have never been so fond of. I watched it again today, and my feelings are still the very same. Nothing to do with THE WILD BUNCH, even if it takes place in Mexico at the turn of the twentieth century, as did the Peckinpah's film. OK Lee Marvin, Burt Lancaster, Robert Ryan, Woody Strode and Jack Palance worth the watching of this action packed western, but it isn't enough for me. The directing is fine, but really I don't intend to see it again before a long time now. One more thing I'd like to add, something the other users seem not have pointed out. This film, as did THE SAND PEEBLES - shot one year later - are some sort of messages to illustrate the American interventionism in Vietnam. In Bob Wise's film, we see US troops fighting in 1924 China, supporting Nationalists troops against the Communists ones...And in the Brook's film, a bunch of US mercenaries are recruited to "save" a woman, kidnapped from her husband, and who finally prefers the presence of her abductor: Jack Palance...See where I am driving at?

On paper this is a great movie; skillful writer-director, first-rate cast, how can it miss, let me count the ways. For one thing the plot is too close to The Magnificent Seven - a group of American adventurers getting involved in Mexican problems - the difference is of course that the seven worked pro bono and these four professionals are in it for the money. For an 'action' film there is not enough excitement albeit there is action but it's so emasculated that it's like watching a firework display in black and white; the four professionals, each capable of carrying a film alone - even Woody Strode played the lead in Sergeant Rutledge - don't really blend together as a team. In short there are elements lacking and/or sub- standard in all departments. Worth a look but that's about it.