User Reviews

What is the price of power? Not much, since I got this movie at a dollar bin at Wal-Mart. The movie isn't the worst Spaghetti western movie I ever saw, but it's no way, has the power to become well-known. You have to suffer from a head blow to think this match up with Sergio Leone's films. In my opinion, it's alright. Directed by Tonino Valerii, this 113 minutes is pretty hard to find, that's if, you can figure out what the title of the film is called. The movie comes with different titles depending on where you lived. The movie been known as the Price of Power, Texas, a Bullet for The President or Dallas. This is often confusing when trying to seek this movie out. Tonino Valerri's western movie is very much serve as an allegory to the assassination of President Kennedy and racial politics in 1960s America. It's seems like the director and writers wanted to put fistful of JFK conspiracy theories in Western settings for some odd reason that end up being good, bad and ugly results. The good thing about the film is how well-made it is. The acting is so-so, but the English dubbing is a little off kilter. Surprising, Giuliano Gemma is pretty good lead in this film. Benito Stefanelli is great as the villainous and corrupt Sheriff Jefferson. Some pretty good excellently staged action. The whole train bridge shootout was pretty intense. I love the whole gun fight in the dark idea in another scene from the movie. I have to say, this movie has one of the oddest trial scenes in the history of film. The music score by Luis Bacalov was pretty daring. The movie has a good music score, though it relies on repeating the title theme a little too much to the point, it got annoying. 'Catch a star in the sky' was a pretty catchy number by singer Norma Jordan AKA Annie in the film. The English audio is perfectly audible but has some pops and hiss in the background. The movie moves in a steady pace, and I didn't find myself bored at times. The film plot reads like this, in 1881 Texas is still divided from the ashes of the Civil War. A American President, President James Garfield (Van Johnson) despite warnings of assassination, comes to Dallas to help establish a new police of equality. Bill Willer (Giuliano Gemma) and two of his friends, a black man named Jack Donovan (Ray Shaunders), and a crippled guy named Nick (Manuel Zarzo) are determined to prevent the President's murder, at any cost. While, the movie doesn't claim to be historical accuracy, I have to say the movie takes great liberty to the historical event leading to Garfield's murder. James Garfield was not assassinated by racists, who wanted to reinstall the confederacy in Texas, but in Washington DC train station by mentally unstable Charles Guiteau who was reject by Garfield's staff after trying to seek a job. The way, the movie version of President Garfield ends up dying isn't even close to what happen to him in real life. It wasn't only the bullet that killed him, according to most experts, what actually killed Garfield over two months later were incompetent doctors who probed and probed to retrieve a bullet to no avail. They never bothered cleaning their hands or implements in the process. Garfield most likely died due to malpractice. I like how Van Johnson also doesn't even look like Garfield in the film. He's missing the beard, has the wrong hair color and style and is just not even close in any way! He is as close as looking like Garfield as Garfield the cat is of looking like the president. I also feel bad for President Chester Arthur. In the film, Garfield's Vice President Chester A. Arthur was being blackmail by Neo-Confederate conspirator banker Allen Pinkerton (Fernando Rey). While, Chester A. Arthur did had a corrupt past, he was no way one of the people conspiring to kill Garfield in real history. Also, in real history, Allan Pinkerton worked with Union intelligence in the Civil War and established the U.S. Intelligence Service, the forerunner of the Secret Service. In the movie they got nothing of history right whatsoever. Still, the film doesn't mention the name Garfield on the film, as the President character is mostly nameless in the film. It's the producers that says that he is supposed to be President Garfield. If he was, or wasn't playing Garfield. The story is fictitious. The whole 1960's feel to the film seems to shine through the dirty 19th century settling, anyways. Even Warren Vanders's character, Arthur McDonald looks sometime out of a Dirty Harry movie and Annie AKA Norma Jordan out of a James Bond film. The film automatically raises the question of whether it reflects Valerii or screenwriter Massimo Patrizi's actual beliefs about the Kennedy assassination. The film makes it look like JFK's assassin, Lee Oswald was innocent who was set up by rightists to take the blame, due to the character of Jack Donavan. If this was the filmmaker's attempt to show, I have to disagree with them. Lee Oswald clearly kill JFK. If anybody help him, is up to question. Oddly, The Price of Power ends up endorsing the idea of a cover-up for the good of the nation. Take it at as it is. It's a good Spaghetti movie that stand out due to its JFK juxtaposition. This is a Spaghetti Western that deserves a much wider reputation that the one it currently holds.

The Price of Power (AKA A Bullet for the President) is an absolutely deranged idea for a movie. It uses the attempted assassination of President James A. Garfield in 1881 to work out the feelings of the death of President John F. Kennedy just six years earlier.

Except that it's a Western.

Made in Italy.

The idea came from commedia all'italiana director Luigi Comencini's brother-in-law Massimo Patrizi, who wrote the script with director Tonino Valeri (Day of Anger, My Dear Killer, My Name Is Nobody) and Ernesto Gastaldi, whose writing credits include All the Colors of the Dark, Torso and The Suspicious Death of a Minor.

Bill Willer (Giuliano Gemma, a true star of the Italian west thanks to turns as Ringo and Arizona Colt) is trying to get revenge for the death of his father while trying to save the life of Garfield from the Pinkerton agency.

The Pinkertons may be heroes elsewhere, but in Pittsburgh, you can drive past the two adjoining cemeteries of St. Mary's and Homestead where remains of six of the seven Carnegie Steel Company workers killed are buried, the bloody aftermath of the Battle of Homestead on July 6, 1892, when Henry Frick tried to use the agency to break strikers with violence.

Van Johnson plays the idealistic Garfield, who is coming to Texas to speak to people who have no interest in hearing what he has to say, yet he believes in the goodness in everyone. Of course, he's killed and the Lee Harvey Oswald figure is Jack Donovan (Ray Saunders), a black man, which adds even more of a connection to the way the world of 1969 was looking, what with Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King being killed and the start of the Years of Lead in Italy. And I'm not certain that the scars in America's psyche had yet healed, so I doubt anyone was ready for a movie they surely saw as escapism having María Cuadra play Jackie Kennedy and follow her exact movements in Dallas. She's even given red roses, just like the President's widow was.

The joy of the Italian west is in finding movies that explore not only the way that film depicts a time and place we can never go to - indeed, many of the filmmakers had not even been to America - and even find that an alternate version of history can tell us so many things about the world we live in today.

Clearly inspired by the assassination of JFK, this impressively bold and imaginative spaghetti Western offers a fierce critique of the corruption and dirty double-dealing that's an intrinsic component of American politics. A handful of rich folks led by slimy wealthy jerk jerk Pinkerton (splendidly played to the hateful hilt by Fernando Rey) plot to assassinate President James Garfield (a fine performance by Van Johnson) when he visits Dallas, Texas. It's up to noble gunfighter Bill Willer (an excellent portrayal by Giuliano Gemma) and his black friend Jack Donovan (solid Ray Saunders) to stop them. Director Tonino Valerii, working from an audacious script by Massimo Patrizi and Ernesto Gastaldi, relates the gripping story at a steady pace, creates a good deal of tension, maintains an appropriately hard and serious tone throughout, and stages the stirring shoot-outs with considerable skill and gusto. This film further benefits from bang-up acting from an able cast, with especially praiseworthy supporting work by Warren Vanders as the president's loyal aide Arthur McDonald, Maria Cuadra as the president's proud wife Lucretia, and Benito Stefanelli as mean, crooked Sheriff Jefferson. Stelvio Massi's polished cinematography boasts a lot of tight close-ups and smooth pans. Luis Enriquez Bacalov's twangy, harmonic, and dynamic score hits the rousing spot. A very gutsy and enjoyable movie.