The Professionals (1966)

I really shouldn't do it but after a particularly harrowing film last night, it seemed a good idea to watch something a little easier to enjoy. Oh dear. I suppose I had bought this whilst on a Burt Lancaster binge and the rest of the cast made it look promising. Oh dear indeed. I guess Lancaster and Marvin are fine and Cardinale does a decent turn at the end but where is the script? Without any decent dialogue (until the last few frames) there is nothing for all these wonderful actors to do. At least spaghetti westerns have some balls. Very tired, very slow an excellent example of what big budget western cinema does best. Very little.

An excellent flick for the escapist with an IQ above 70. You can't imagine a better cast - Lancaster, Marvin, Ryan, Strode Bellamy, Palance. The cinematography of the western vistas is absolutely stunning, shot in the sadly extinct Technicolor process. The score is by perhaps the greatest film composer of the 20th century, Maurice Jarre (who scored Lawrence of Arabia, The Train, Dr. Zhivago, Witness, among so many others). The script is extremely intelligent and skillfully develops the interplay between the characters and their various backgrounds. But there are lots of explosions and shoot-em-ups along the way, as well as plenty of plot surprises. An intelligent and enjoyable way to burn 2 hours of your leisure time.

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.

"The Professionals" is one of those westerns made when the genre was getting a little tired, but before it was okay to completely throw out the old rules. The story is simple enough: a wealthy land baron hires four professionals, who are each the best at what they do, to go on a daring mission deep into Mexico, amid a faltering revolution, to bring back his kidnapped wife. Lee Marvin leads the band, playing a grizzled veteran of that revolution, with Burt Lancaster receiving top-billing and playing a dynamite expert who is easily tempted by women and adventure. The crew is rounded out by a bow-and-arrow and tracking expert (Woody Strode) and a veteran horseman (Robert Ryan). This is definitely a movie that hangs its hat on action, with shootouts spaced periodically through the movie to keep the audience awake and a signature raid on the Mexican revolutionaries/kidnappers camp at mid- film that was only a notch or two below similar scenes in more modern films, and was thus very enjoyable. These scenes were fine, albeit a little silly with the Lancaster's bottomless supply of amazing TNT. However, the rest of the movie plods on predictably. There are definitely attempts at character development but perhaps the wooden Lee Marvin as a central character makes the whole thing hard to enjoy except when the bullets (and TNT-laden arrows) are flying. I was definitely disappointed when the spectacular camp raid scene ended too quickly and I realized there were still over 30 minutes of film left with the best scene in the rear-view mirror.I would watch about 20 or 30 other classic westerns before getting to this one. It's not bad, the action sequences were certainly worth the price of admission in 1966, but it shows why the traditional western as a dominant genre was living on borrowed time.