1967, Italy. Starring Gian Maria Volonte, Klaus Kinski, Martine Beswick, Lou Castel, Jaime Fernandez, Andrea Checchi. Directed by Damiano Damiani. Available on DVD (Amazon).

Damn, this film is good! Great acting, a tight plot -- it just does everything right. Along with The Good The Bad and the Ugly and Companeros, it's among my all-time favorite films. It leads the small pack of late 1960s Spaghetti Westerns that finally broke away from the "vengeance seeking stranger" motif and tried something different. That something different is wit and charm in place of bitterness and gloom, politics and social issues in place of revenge and hatred. But most of all, it tries out human characters instead of larger-than-life archetypes. The result is simply superb.

The action is set in Mexico during the Mexican Civil War. A young baby-faced killer (Caste) from America joins up with a group of Mexican bandits lead by the charismatic joker, El Chuncho (Gian Maria Volonte, best known to Americans as the main villain from Sergio Leone's For a Few Dollars More). It soon becomes obvious to the viewer that the gringo is just using the bandits in order to get to the noble "Bandit General," hidden somewhere in the mountains, waging a righteous fight for the rights of the Mexican peasantry, who true to the Western formula, spend the bulk of the film running for cover.

Chuncho is a merry chap who takes an instant liking to the gringo, whom he nicknames Nino. Nino helps the bandits score big and steal many weapons from government arsenals, including a much coveted machine gun. At the same time, however, he is cleverly manipulating the key players int he gang against one another, sowing the seeds of jealousy and discord.

Nino's manipulation comes to a head during a victory celebration, Chuncho and his gang have successfully reclaimed an oppressed town from the land baron who has kept the people down. They have a ton of weapons to sell to the rebels, thus guaranteeing them a small fortune. But they also know that vengeful government soldiers will be on their way to take back the town, and the peasants by themselves are certainly no match for the army. Chuncho's first thought is to stay in the town rather than head to the mountains to make the sell. Nino convinces some of the others that Chuncho is signing a suicide pact for them by refusing to leave. Int he end, Chuncho is convinced of his role as "just a gun runner," while his scripture-quoting brother (played by Klaus Kinski) decides to stay behind and help the peasants defend themselves.

The film is marvelous at confusing the boundaries between good and bad, hero and villain. Chuncho is alternately a warm man who cares for the oppressed, a ruthless killer who will execute federal soldiers without a second thought, and a mercenary in it all for the money. It's the duality of his character that makes the film so compelling and eventually serves as its climactic point, as he's forced to decide whether he really is just a gun-runner in it for the money or whether he is, in fact, a revolutionary who believes in the cause he outfits with rifles and ammunition.

Through it all, the gringo remains a cold manipulator whose actions never really cover the fact that he has no problem just doing it for the money, and will put a bullet in anyone's back if it will help him achieve his goal. A symbol of America and American foreign policy? You decide.

After making the sell, Chuncho is confronted by the General with the fact that his abandonment of a town in order to deliver guns for money resulted in the slaughter of the citizens. Chuncho realizes at this point that he is not the mercenary he thought himself, and urges the general to put him to death for the crime. Chuncho has his moral awakening and is ashamed of his past greed, especially when he wounded brother arrives to serve as executioner. Unfortunately for everyone involved, Nino isn't quite done twisting the situation to fit his needs.

Heavy themes aside, this movie works as a good ol' action-packed western, with lots of hollerin' and shootin' and Mexicans making merry. The added depth of the story doesn't weight the film down or stop it from being a fast-moving thrill ride. The politics and social statements serve instead as nitro in the fuel of an already explosive experience. Like I said, it's easily one of the best western's I've ever seen, and as I'm fond of saying, a damn good film no matter what genre you're looking at.

What this and films like Companeros have to really set them apart from the rest of the films isn't just the politics, though. It's the humanity. Previously, the characters in Spaghetti Westerns were one-dimensional symbols of a certain feeling or belief. The vengeance seeking stranger was rarely a well-defined, fleshed-out human character; he was simply a vengeance seeking stranger, and we rarely knew much more about him by the end of the movie than we did at the beginning. Quien Sabe? decides to do away with the character as archetype and instead focuses on the character as a human.

Thanks in no small part to Gian Maria Volonte's skills as an actor, Chuncho becomes an endearing and engaging human character whose turmoil and moral confusion is expressed on an empathetic level. Guys like him would later influence mainstream "reluctant bandit heroes" like Han Solo from that one movie. What was it called again? The strength of Chuncho and his bandits as full-fledged human characters is what makes this a great movie. The charm and wit make it irresistible.