LGM Film Club, Part 492: The Big Gundown

Things suck, but we still have movies and I recently watched one of my favorite non-Leone spaghetti westerns, The Big Gundown. Directed by Sergio Sollima and released in 1967, it stars an excellent Lee Van Cleef as a bounty hunter with ambitions of becoming the next senator from Texas. Walter Barnes is a big time railroad capitalist. He has an offer for Van Cleef–do his bidding and go to Washington. Then, while they are meeting, word comes that a Mexican (Tomas Milian) has raped and killed a 12 year old girl. Van Cleef’s job is to hunt him down. But not surprisingly, the truth is much more complicated than the story he is given. Milian’s role is basically the clown trickster who actually is smarter than everyone. This is actually a good film, with a quite strong script and a superb job by Van Cleef. The plot actually makes sense, which is not always the case. There’s also a bunch of kind of hilarious setpieces–the Mormon family, the young hot sadistic widow and her henchmen, stuff like that. Also, the Blu-Ray of this film looks astoundingly good. Years ago now, my brother bought this for me and it was my first Blu-Ray and I was astounded at the quality. I am still am. It’s worth seeking out. Beats the hell out of the news.

Also, it’s available on YouTube in its entirety.