Keoma (1977)

Pretty Good

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

A half-breed ex-Union gunfighter (Franco Nero) attempts to protect his plague-ridden hometown from being overridden by his racist half-brothers and a Confederate tyrant (Donald O'Brien).While participating in the filming of "21 Hours at Munich", Franco Nero was approached by his longtime friend and collaborator Enzo G. Castellari and producer Malono Bolognini on the proposition of appearing in a Spaghetti Western, despite dwindling demand for films of that genre. The original treatment was written by actor George Eastman and developed into a script by Mino Roli and Nico Ducci, neither of whom were experienced writers of Spaghetti Westerns.This ends up being one of the better latter-day spaghetti westerns, with great slow-motion fights, horses falling and everything that should be in a big budget western. There is a great examination of race -- both native Americans and more -- that is honest and fair. The one big down side, as others have pointed out, is the awful soundtrack. The score is alright, but every time someone sings it is just atrocious.

Keoma (Franco Nero), a half-Indian half-Caucasian civil war veteran returns to his homeland to find it in squalor and disrepair at the hands of gang leader and presiding landlord Caldwell (Donald O'Brien) and his enforcers; keeping the inhabitants in poverty and cureless from the plague that's going around. Those who do circum are rounded up and dumped at the old mine on the outskirts. It is here that a passing Keoma saves a pregnant woman (Olga Karlatos) – wrongly assumed to be infected – from imminent murder.Keoma is a solid, gripping and mythical western that is incredibly stylish and not entirely without substance either. The only major flaw is the film's overly-insistent and frequently agitating score in the form of a warbling diva and throaty male vocalist taking it in turns to sing what is happening in the film as it happens with some very on-the- nose lyrics: "Now I'm here in front of these men/Gun in hand, I'm waiting for what will be…" and; "There's my father and my brothers and me/Tell me now father, why they hate me so." The instrumental sections fair a lot better providing some effectively cathartic moments.

Bleak, violent, and well-photographed, Keoma is heavily atmospheric. However, all the pain and intense guilt that saturates the film, as well as the blood, dust, and mud make one want to take a shower after watching it.Franco Nero is always good. Here, he looks like a brooding, six foot pile of hair with piercing blue eyes and a hat, looking down on an old west that often times looks as if it had been hit by an atomic bomb and populated by mean-spirited, hate-filled, subhuman characters.Though not a boring or bad movie, it's awfully pretentious and a sharp left turn from director Enzo G. Castellari's usually light-hearted approach to the genre, in such films as Any Gun Can Play, Payment In Blood, and Kill Them All And Come Back Alone.

Not your typical western, not even a typical spaghetti western. This revenge western is more at home in Africa than in America.It is the tale of a town controlled by an evil warlord (Donald O'Brien) and his henchmen. No law, no one to save the citizens. In rides Keoma (or Django as he has been known) to exact revenge. Franco Nero is excellent in his role, and Enzo G. Castellari sometimes mirrors Jadorowski in his approach. I said it wasn't typical.Action is nonstop and there is more fighting and shooting than talking. Always good for a western. As you may expect, it ends with the town finally waking up trying to take back control.