Lee Van Cleef stars as John Corbett, an amateur lawman who has a reputation for being able to hunt down any fugitive. He has his eye on a senate seat, so when a wealthy railroad tycoon offers to back his election campaign in exchange for tracking down "Cuchillo" Sanchez (Tomas Milian), a Mexican peasant accused of raping and murdering a 12 year old girl, Corbett accepts. This kicks off a long series of near misses where Van Cleef gets close, only to see Milian get away. As the chase heats up and the two men get to know each other, Van Cleef starts to suspect that Milian has been set up as a fall guy. This is a top tier spaghetti western, very reminiscent of Leone in the way the character dynamics work, and accompanied by a fantastic Ennio Morricone score. It lacks Leone's operatic tone and stylistic excesses, but is a solid western ... kind ofa sleek, working man's Leone.

One of the best and possibly the greatest Spaghetti Western ever made. The Big Gundown (or La Resa Dei Conti) is a marvelous example of how not every Spaghetti Western without Sergio Leone was bad. The film has a superb cast with two great stars for westerns, and a great script. The film is a powerhouse to other films, but no one sees it.Sergio Sollima's film is a film that has been forgotten throughout the years. People only remember Spaghetti Westerns due to The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly and Once Upon A Time In The West. This film though, does mix the two's most infamous part's of each film. Leone's Good, Bad, And ugly has an epic showdown that everyone will remember even if you have seen it once, and Leone's Once Upon a Time one has politics and social issues. The Big Gundown mixes an epic showdown towards the end of the film with and uses politics and social issues to bring toward the climax. One thing though stands out to this film, the music. Ennio Morricone's Spaghetti Western music is probably the most iconic (especially The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly). But, Morricone's music is more of his finer work. His work for Leone is considered gold, but this is a piece of lost gold. Just the opening titles really get you pumped up, and the showdown music towards the end with the Butler and Cuchillo is marvelous. But, then there is the other showdown music with the Baron from Austria and Corbert. The music for that scene mixes Beethoven with Western showdown.If you're looking for a film to watch, especially a somewhat of a Cult Film, I recommend this with open hands. It is a great film, it isn't as long as Leone's pictures, but it is intense. There is probably no other Non-Leone Spaghetti Western out there that comes close. I hope you enjoy this film.

Hard to find but slightly disappointing spaghetti western. Van Cleef is fine but Tomas Milian seems to struggle in a less than clearly defined role. Sollima also seems to make things difficult for himself by making the first half so episodic as it ambles from here to there. The music is often claimed to be one of Morricone's best but I find it very slightly over the top. It is never uninteresting but just at moments he seems to be desperately trying to raise the film up to where it barely deserves. There are great scenes nevertheless. The leaving of the boss lady at the ranch is a surprise, the chase through the cornfields excellent (admittedly helped enormously here by Morricone) and the final shootout or gundown or even gundowns is magnificent. Well worth searching out and notable for political references but not for me quite as tight or satisfactory as the director's 'Face to Face' from the year before.

At the 61st Venice Film Festival, Quentin Tarantino named THE BIG GUNDOWN not only his favorite Spaghetti Western but one of the all-time Top 5 Westerns!; ironically, though I knew of the film's reputation and had actually already missed out on it on late-night Italian TV due to a power cut, I was all set to give it another miss because I had intended to attend a screening of the latest film by nonagenarian Portuguese film-maker Manoel de Oliveira during which he was also to be presented with a Lifetime Achievement Award...but when, during a Press Conference, Tarantino singled out this one as being the film to see at the "Italian Kings Of The 'B'" retrospective (which he and Joe Dante were presiding over), I just had to be there - since, unlike most other titles at the Festival, it was reserved just that one screening! The show, then, was delayed by an unattended bag left inside the theater from the previous screening which, incidentally, had been Ferdinando Baldi's Spaghetti Western BLINDMAN (1972) and, given the paranoid state of affairs post-9/11, this necessitated the intervention of bomb disposal units/dogs/soldiers/police before anyone could be allowed to re-enter the hall and the projection of the next film could proceed! If that wasn't enough, Joe Dante - who was present at the screening and my brother and I could overhear him waxing lyrical to his wife about the film's qualities - had to leave the theater after the first few minutes of the projection because, for some reason, English subtitles were not supplied with the only available print! Anyway, let's get to the film itself: from the accompanying interview with director Sollima, I learned that the Tomas Milian role was originally intended for Gian Maria Volonte', who was to have played a much older "prey" - but then the characters' ages were reversed. As it turned out, this was the first film to feature Milian's "Cuchillo" Sanchez character - a wily Mexican peasant and a dexterous knife-thrower - which he reprised in RUN, MAN, RUN (1968; also directed by Sollima and whose R1 DVD courtesy of Blue Underground I ordered following this viewing, also because it's the only remaining title from the company's "The Spaghetti Western Collection" set I have yet to watch!). The original treatment (by Franco Solinas) was much more politicized but, even if this element was eventually toned down, it's still palpable in the film's critical depiction of the upper-classes - arrogant, duplicitous and perverse - vis-a'-vis the struggling and downtrodden but lusty (and, by extension, virile) lower classes.Lee Van Cleef has one of his best roles ever as renowned bounty hunter (with an eye on a place in the Senate) Jonathan Corbett; to me, his relationship with Milian's character is one of the strongest ever to be established within the entire Western genre, and it's this that elevates the film above most non-Leone Italian efforts. Ennio Morricone provides one of his most eclectic and haunting scores that's weird and exhilarating at the same time, especially towards the end of the film when the song (ironically called "Run, Man, Run" and with a heightened vocal rendition by Christy to match!) - which is also heard over the opening credits - is reprised. In contrast to the operatic and baroque styles adopted by the other two Sergios - Leone and Corbucci, respectively - Sollima utilizes a much more sober, humanist and, ultimately, realistic approach.The complexity of this film's script belies the general low esteem in which the genre is held (being episodic in nature, with Van Cleef and Milian meeting up with a plethora of diverse characters during the course of the manhunt; one of the most memorable scenes is when Van Cleef goes to look for Milian's wife, a feisty prostitute who verbally abuses her husband for having deserted her but then lashes out at Van Cleef when realizing his true intent, after which the latter is cornered by the entire local community!); indeed, at the time, these films were more authentic than the examples - the Western was then on its last legs - churned out by Hollywood...at least until THE WILD BUNCH (1969) came along! I remember when the film was reviewed in a journal available outside the venue of the Venice Film Festival, it was described as having allegiances with the giallo genre - Milian is accused of being a serial rapist - but, having rewatched the film, this element isn't sufficiently stressed to make that connection! One of its more interesting aspects, however, is the reciprocated respect that passes between Van Cleef and Austrian bodyguard/ex-military officer/aristocrat/marksman Gerard Herter (whose character Sollima admitted to having based on Erich von Stroheim). This, in turn, gives way to a terrific extended climax: first, we see Milian duel with the real culprit of the crimes he's suspected of, then Van Cleef's stand-off with the Baron, and finally the confrontation between Corbett and the villainous railroad tycoon who appointed him to trail Milian in the first place. The cast also features a brief but striking turn by Nieves Navarro as a nymphomaniac rancher(!) and Fernando Sancho as a Mexican policeman who, hating the revolutionaries as much as the Americans, is content to let them cut each others' throat.I'm surprised, therefore, that the film has still to make it to R1 DVD but I'm glad I picked up the R2 edition: the remastered print is beautiful and the film contains a 15-minute interview (though the video proved problematic initially) with Sergio Sollima that was highly engaging, informative and even funny (his quips about the highbrow Italian films of the time, the critics' darlings as opposed to the largely neglected genre offerings, is priceless!); in fact, I wish he'd done a full-length Audio Commentary for the film, as I really could have listened to him talk all day!!