I hardly see 60's or 70's western movies but whatever I've seen so far are gems. The Five Man Army may or may not be a classic but it still makes for an entertaining watch. The train heist the five men do looks very unsophisticated but the matter in which they plan and do it is applause-worthy. Definitely, the best parts of the movie are the entire train robbery scenes.Peter Graves as the leader of the five is dashingly handsome and there are few leading Hollywood stars today who look as good as this suave man. Rest of the gang too seem like a perfect fit too. If you substitute actor Tetsuro Tamba for someone else as Samurai, you may not miss much but others like actors James Daly, Bud Spencer & Nino Castelnuovo are bang on fit for their characters.Good story, action and music - everything required for an old Western potboiler is in here.Verdict: A feel-good movie. You'll have a nice time.

"Mission Impossible" star Peter Graves made director Don Taylor's "Un Esercito di Cinque Uomini" while on hiatus from his hit contemporary CBS-TV series, and this epic adventure reunited both the star and the director who had worked together previously on director Billy Wilder's first-class, black & white, World War II P.O.W. classic "Stalag 13" in 1953. "They Call Me Trinity," "Trinity Is Still My Name," and "Sons of Trinity" producer Italo Zingarelli financed this improbable military heist escapade set in 20th century Mexico during the political/agrarian revolution. Scenarists Marc Richards of "Gilligan's Planet" and notable writer & director Dario Argento of "Suspiria" cobble together enough surefire formulaic elements from John Sturges' "The Magnificent Seven," Sam Peckinpah's "The Wild Bunch," and Jules Dassin's "Riffi" to provide audiences with 105 minutes of gripping, flavorful entertainment, especially if you relish Italian westerns lensed on location in sunny Spain.Indeed, "Un Esercito di Cinque Uomini" belongs to a sub-genre of westerns about yet another group of professional warriors coming to the aid of the downtrodden, like "The Magnificent Seven" and its sequels. These westerns became a dime a dozen not only in America, but they also appeared in droves in Europe. In fact, this represented a trend throughout the 1960s and the 1970s and later became a staple of network television with shows like "The A-Team" and "The Unit." The modern day setting that adds trucks and machine guns to the storyline aligns it with "The Wild Bunch" about a gang of American outlaws performing one last mission before the sun sets on them. Furthermore, the mission that these guys are hired to carry out at a thousand dollars per man involves hijacking a heavily armed train. In "The Wild Bunch," the anti-heroes stole munitions from a U.S. Army train, while our heroes rob a military train with a fortune in gold set to the dictator of Mexico—Huerta—to shore up his embattled government.Unlike "The Wild Bunch," the heroes in "Un Esercito di Cinque Uomini" are largely criminals on the run who redeem themselves by helping the working class. In a sense, this movie amounts to a complex amalgamation of the spaghetti western in general as well as the political spaghetti western in particular, movies such as "The Mercenary," "Companeros," "Duck, You Sucker," and "A Bullet for the General." The hybrid nature of Taylor's suspenseful western continues with its casting of Japanese actor Teturo Tamba. "Un Esercito di Cinque Uomini" appears to have pre-dated and perhaps even inspired spaghetti/samurai westerns such as "Red Sun" (1972) with Charles Bronson and Toshirô Mifune, "The Fighting Fists of Shangai Joe" (1972) with Klaus Kinski and Chen Lee, and the Lee Van Cleef oater "The Stranger and the Gunfighter" with Leih Lo, to name a few.The Dutchman (Peter Graves) assembles a crack team at a thousand dollars a man to rob a gold train. He hires Mesito (Bud Spencer of the "Trinity" comedies), Captain Nicolas Augustus (James Daly of "Medical Center"), Samurai (Tetsuro Tamba of "You Only Live Twice") and Luis (Nino Castelnuovo of "Rocco and his Brothers") to help him steal a half-million dollars in gold from a heavily fortified military train. The Dutchman chooses Augustus because the man handles explosives well. He needs the brute strength of Mesito, knife hurling talents of Samurai, and Luis' ability to leap and bound. Each of these characters is essentially on the lam. Mesito is hiding out after a cattle rustling job on a chicken farm when Luis recruits him to the mission. Luis finds Augustus hustling poor miners at poker, and Samurai is performing in a circus. The first hour of the film sets up the plot and the remainder deals with the hijacking and getting away with the loot. Along the way, our heroes get captured by the Mexican Army. Unfortunately, this is the weakest part of the story. They escape from jail far too easily.Naturally, our heroes encounter the inevitable complications that are part and parcel of heist yarns. Nothing can go for long as planned otherwise there would be no suspense and we wouldn't worry about our heroes getting caught. One character loses his nerve in the middle of the robbery, while another falls off the train. The first one has to improvise an explosives device that will blast off a train coupling without alerted everybody with a spectacular blast. The second one—and the best—has Samurai scrambling across country to catch up with the train.The opening credits steeps the viewer in the violence and turmoil of the day with a fascinating, black & white montage of pictures set to one of Ennio Morricone's brilliant orchestral scores. Morricone's music enhances the action whether it require strident music and an evocatively mournful tune. Without Morricone's music, "Un Esercito di Cinque Uomini" would suffer considerably.Richards and Argento never let our characters off the hook from start to finish and Taylor directs with his eye on constant action. Any lulls in the story serve as a way to generate suspense. Taylor's best touch is the lack of dialogue during the actual train hijacking that recalls the quiet robbery in Dassin's "Riffi." Of course, characterization is sketchy, but anything essential to our knowledge is furnished. For example, Dutchman's last minute conversion from mercenary to revolutionary is explained by the death of his Mexican wife, an allusion intentional or otherwise to the Lee Marvin character in Richard Brooks' "The Professionals" (1966) whose wife died at the hands of the Mexican Army so that he works against them in a similar pay-for-hire mission.Altogether, "Un Esercito di Cinque Uomini" qualifies as a solid, suspenseful, spaghetti western version of "Mission: Impossible" with the emphasis on the mission than random gunfights. The last ten minutes involves what appears to be double-crosses and betrayals, but everything works out happily for our heroes who survive several tight spots.

To begin with, this is one of the first films I ever recall watching – my father having acquired a copy on 16mm when I was still a kid!; needless to say, I've been wanting to re-acquaint myself with it for several years – particularly to see how it stacked up against other Spaghetti Westerns which, naturally, I came across much later…and, this, in spite of Leonard Maltin's unflattering rating! As it turned out, the film lived up to my expectations in being a middle-of-the-road genre effort – not one of the best, perhaps, but reasonably entertaining all the same. Incidentally, it forms part of a handful of Spaghetti Westerns with the Mexican Revolution as backdrop; an added attraction to the film, then, is its main plot involving a caper aboard a moving (and heavily-guarded) train – it has, in fact, been referred to as a cross between THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN (1960; in view of the select group called upon to aid in a cause) and THE WILD BUNCH (1969; which had a similar robbery as a subplot)! While the central train sequence involves some notable tension (the elderly dynamite expert loses part of his equipment, the samurai falls off and has to run across a lengthy stretch of fields in order to rejoin his associates), the gang is never shown to be in any serious danger throughout; the final confrontation with the Army, for instance, is nothing at all like the notorious massacre seen in THE WILD BUNCH itself – in fact, none of them gets wounded or killed…and even the tension within the outfit over whether they should hand over the gold to the revolutionaries or else keep it for themselves is resolved without so much as a punch (rather it's shrugged off with a laugh!).The multi-national group is played by Americans Peter Graves (well cast in a basic extension of his signature role in the classic MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE TV series) and James Daly (his presence here isn't displeasing yet quite baffling, as he can't have been at all a familiar name to Italians – personally, I only knew him from his brief role in PLANET OF THE APES [1968]!), Japanese Tetsuro Tamba (who's just as anonymous as Daly – perhaps the film's budget could afford only one foreign 'star') and, of course, Italians Bud Spencer (a staple of the genre and, thankfully, resorting only very briefly to his trademark comic brawling) and the youthful Nino Castelnuovo (who, naturally, sides with the Revolution all along). The supporting cast includes another genre contribution from Italian starlet Daniela Giordano (as a Mexican peasant girl who shows interest in samurai Tamba): her lovely presence is always welcome – and I still recalled the scene here in which the Army General tears off her clothes from all those years ago! – but it's not quite as captivating as in the two other films of hers that I've watched; there's also Giacomo Rossi-Stuart – who, for an actor of his stature, is given very little screen-time as a lieutenant to the Mexican General.Having mentioned the surprise casting, one also has to question the decision behind offering the directorial reins to a minor-league American, former actor Taylor; incidentally, years later, when Giordano was asked by a magazine to comment about the film, she couldn't even recall him being on the set and that co-director Zingarelli handled most of the proceedings! Dario Argento was also behind this film as a scriptwriter – which makes the film's tameness all the more curious and, given its derivative nature, perhaps shows his ultimate disenchantment with the Spaghetti Western genre…or else he was already thinking of branching out into direction (his debut film, the seminal giallo THE BIRD WITH THE CRYSTAL PLUMAGE [1970], was released not long after). THE FIVE MAN ARMY is marked by yet another rousing Ennio Morricone score – which is cited by fans as being among his best from this era but, to me, it felt somewhat too similar to his work on Sergio Leone's "Dollars" trilogy! Finally, I couldn't really determine the running-time of the film – since it was interrupted by numerous publicity spots (I watched a VHS recording of a TV broadcast); however, curiously enough, the Italian version is listed as being only 91 minutes long on "Stracult"…whereas the edition prepared for U.S. consumption is 107 minutes!

American actor Don Taylor tries his hand at directing a truly international "spaghetti western". A fast pace, fine musical score and satisfactory performances hold this rip-off of "The Magnificent Seven" and "The Wild Bunch" together over the course of nearly two hours."The Dutchman" (Peter Graves) recruits for of his old friends to go on a suicide mission. This involves infiltrating, capturing and then making off with a train filled with Mexican Gold. Each will get a small share; the rest will go to aid the Mexican revolutionary forces that the Dutchman has fallen in with.Young writer Dario Argento's script doesn't hold up to his later flair, but keeps the familiar characters and plot line interesting enough to hold dedicated attention. The Dutchman is the typical hero of the piece, and Graves comes to life despite the fact that we know nothing about his background. He seems a little uncomfortable – somewhat uneasy – although his dedication to the robbery is very convincing. He does introduce the 4 members of the "Army" in an obligatory speech, and the rest of the cast stick their characterizations with little or no added ingenuity.First, there's Augustus (James Daly), a grizzled demolition expert who's been in hiding since Spanish-American War. Augustus and Dutchman are two tired, old men and they have a great dramatic discussion reflecting the changing of the times and how they no longer fit into society. Bud Spencer is a lot of fun as the dimwitted Mesito, a giant whose sole redeeming quality seems to be his brute strength. Interestingly enough, Spencer recorded his own dialog in English, and his real voice simply adds to the humor his character – he's got a thick accent, but good command of English, which balances out perfectly. Then there's Samurai (Tetsuro Tamba) a silent warrior who was rescued from a circus sideshow to help carry out the mission. Rounding out the band is Luis, a former acrobat-turned-outlaw who found a home in the Revolution while on the run from the Mexican Army. Throughout the piece, the heroes are out to satisfy their own greed, but a surprise ending ties together all of the loose ends.The musical score of this piece is above-average work from the always-excellent Ennio Morricone, who contributed scores for some of the best spaghetti westerns, including "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly". It's appropriately rousing and adds flair to the exciting moments, and occasional mournful and evocative in the slower, sad sequences – notably, Dutchman's moving speech near the end which explains just why he's in league with the Revolution. He also contributes a fine extended, ultra-weird piece when one main character falls from the train and has to run for several minutes to catch up with his comrades.The film never has a boring moment. Taylor keeps his camera moving in every scene, always showing off sagebrush, pueblos and military garrisons which always look and feel real. The movie is about men on the go – it never stays in one location very long, and while there, something exciting is always happening. Every piece of dialog helps to flesh out the characters or explain the mission further. When people aren't talking, they're in an intense situation – whether it be the ambush of a Mexican truck, escape from a military prison, or the lengthy takeover of the train (which, perhaps, is one of the best extended action sequences ever caught on film) – there is never a dull moment.Taylor manages to keep the action interesting enough and different enough in each scene, too – there's not just lots of fast gun-play going on. There is one notable capture-and-escape sequence involving a heavily fortified Mexican garrison, and the 20+ minute sequence depicting the infiltration and capture of the armored train is nail-biting. The stunts look to be performed by the real actors on a moving train – there is no rear-projection here.The production values are higher than usual for this genre. The crowd scenes are truly massive, and Taylor is able to take time establishing his locations using cranes and long pans before jumping right into the action. Although the first half of the film has a dry, depressing look to it (the exteriors are barren and desolate) the second half features several large, open grassy plains – something not often seen in a film of this kind. The territory surrounding the train, especially, looks vast and open – only once do we notice the painfully obvious presence of a sound-stage, as the characters observe the train from a distance.There are a lot of little things that go wrong with the production or some small parts of the film which lack badly needed care, however, which hamper the effectiveness of the proceedings. The second unit direction seems a bit half-hearted. When extras are shot and die, they slump over with considerable effort and never really look to have been shot. There are also noticeable gaps in logic – the heroes board the train in full view of some very unobservant Mexican guards; the main characters seem afraid of a giant cannon on the train, but it's not as though it can fire at them at such a close range. Also, the engineer (Jose Torres) is taken prisoner because he's allied with the military government, but near the climax, his character disappears. One moment he is standing on the train; in the next shot he is simply gone. What happened to him? In the end, "The Five Man Army" is no more than merely a hash of clichés, but manages to be engaging and entertaining throughout without offering anything new and notable.