Compañeros [Vamos a matar, compañeros] **** (1970, Franco Nero, Tomas Milian, Fernando Rey) – Classic Movie Review 10,852

Director Sergio Corbucci’s 1970 Technicolor and Techniscope spaghetti Western film Compañeros [Vamos a matar compañeros] stars Franco Nero, Tomas Milian, Jack Palance and Fernando Rey. It is one of Corbucci’s esteemed and much admired classics, along with Django and The Great Silence.

Milian plays a peasant named El Vasco who starts a revolt in his town of San Bernardino during the Mexican Revolution by killing the army colonel in charge. Nero plays arms dealer Yodlaf Peterson, a Swedish mercenary who arrives in Mexico to sell guns to guerrilla General Mongo (José Bódalo), but the money is locked in a bank safe. Palance plays John, a wooden-armed American who wants to exact revenge on his former business partner Peterson. Rey plays Professor Xantos, a prisoner of the Americans who knows the combination to the safe containing the money. Yodlaf agrees to free Xantos, accompanied by the reluctant Vasco, but John ‘The Wooden Hand’ has other ideas.

The noteworthy soundtrack is written by Ennio Morricone.

The film title translates as Let’s Go and Kill, Companions.

Compañeros was released in Italy in December 1970.

Compañeros tuned out to be Corbucci’s last big box-office hit but it is known as one of the most accomplished, exciting and stylish of the spaghetti Westerns, with its expert and sophisticated mix of cynicism, humour, pathos, violent comic book-style action and political commentary. Corbucci made three more spaghetti Westerns, but the genre’s popularity was ending.

Writers: Dino Maiuri, Massimo De Rita, Günter Ebert and Sergio Corbucci.

Sergio Corbucci (1926–1990).

Franco Nero (born 23 November 1941) has had a long-standing relationship with Vanessa Redgrave, which began during the filming of Camelot. They were married in 2006. His breakthrough role was as the title character in Sergio Corbucci’s Spaghetti Western film Django (1966), a role he reprised in Django Strikes Again (1987). He made a cameo appearance in Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained.

The cast are Franco Nero as Yodlaf Peterson, Tomas Milian as El Vasco, Jack Palance as John, Fernando Rey as Professor Xantos, Iris Berben as Lola, José Bódalo (as Francisco Bodalo) as General Mongo, Eduardo Fajardo (as Edoardo Fajardo) as Colonel, Karin Schubert as Zaira, Gino Pernice (as Luigi Pernice) as Tourneur, Gérard Tichy as Lieutenant, Álvaro de Luna as John’s henchman, Tito García as Pepito Tigrero, and Lorenzo Robledo as Captain Jim.

© Derek Winnert 2021 Classic Movie Review 10,852

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