"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.
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.