My love for Sergio Sollima’s THE BIG GUNDOWN (La Resa dei Conti) started years before I even saw the film. My very first experience with Italian westerns started with Sergio Leone’s THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY when I was just wee lil’ Phantom. That film (to this day) is not only one of my favorite westerns, but also one my favorite films period. Along with being one of the best films of all time, it also has one of the best scores of all time, written by the one and only Ennio Morricone. At some point in my teens I became obsessed with Spaghetti Westerns and I discovered and rediscovered some of the best the genre had to offer. Along with the films, I also became obsessed with the music (I’ve always thought that a great score is the backbone of a great Spaghetti Western). I started to track down the scores on CD and the first one I purchased was for the score for THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY (naturally). This particular version of the score, also featured the score for a movie I’d never heard of called, La Resa dei Conti. Eventually I let the disc play past the GB&U score and listened to the score for the other film and I was blown away. It was nothing like the GB&U score; it featured vocals on few songs, by a woman that sang in very broken English. It was a tad off-setting at first, but the whole score quickly grew on me.
After falling in love with the score, I searched for years for the film to no avail until one fateful day when it was featured on the Starz Westerns channel. Finally after years and years of envisioning the film in my head, I was finally going to get a chance to see the film that featured that incredible score! Sadly, the film did not blow me away. There was no way to compete with the incredible epic I created in my mind through the music. At the time, I was not familiar with much Tomas Milian’s films, so to me he came off as a two-bit Eli Wallach (I feel shame for that now), and as much as I loved Lee Van Cleef, I didn’t feel he was used correctly in the film (more shame). Many years later I would give the film another try (thanx, Scott!) and it was if I’d watched it with different eyes. Once I had time to get over the fact that it wasn’t the epic I hoped it was, I realized it was still a damn good flick, with Van Cleef and Milian chewing up the scenery in the way they only could—and should! Now, THE BIG GUNDOWN stands as one of my all time favorite Spag’ Westerns right next to COMPANEROS, DJANGO, ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST, KEOMA, and the almighty THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY.
Lee Van Cleef plays Jonathan 'Colorado' Corbett, a renowned gunman that is sent to track down a low-life Mexican thief named Cuchillo, for the rape and murder of a 12 year-old girl. Cuchillo is played by Tomas Milian, and he creates one of the all-time best Spag’ western characters here (Cuchillo would return in Sollima’s RUN, MAN, RUN, a sequel of sorts to THE BIG GUNDOWN). Cuchillo is not just a thief, but also a master manipulator and one deadly hombre with a blade—so good that he doesn’t even need a gun. He’s a lady’s man, but still has love for his devoted prostitute wife (played the fa-reak-ing gorgeous, María Granada). It is as if Cuchillo has a guardian angel with him where ever he goes, as he manages to get out of every sticky situation he finds himself in—and he gets into quite a few of them. Every time Corbett almost nabs Cuchillo, he gets away and this only makes Corbett want to catch him more. Though it seems every time Cuchillo escapes, Corbett actually starts to respect the clever little bastard.
As the story goes on, it is brought to Corbett’s attention that Cuchillo may not be guilty of the crime that he is accused of, and the rich Railroad tycoon named Brokston (Walter Barnes) that wants him caught so badly may be trying to protect the real rapist/murderer. When Corbett is not able to track Cuchillo, Brokston uses his own master gunman, a dandy German named Baron von Schulenberg (played by Gérard Herter and criminally underused in the film) to track down Cuchillo, alongside Corbett. By the way, The Baron’s theme song, (a twist on Beethoven’s Fur Elise) was recently reused in Quentin Tarantino’s INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS to interesting effect. Things all come to a head and the film ends with not one, but two duels. While the film’s ending will not surprise any fan of these kinds of films, I must say that the film’s story arch overall is quite refreshing from the glut of by-the-numbers Spaghetti Westerns (BTW, I love by-the-numbers westerns too). Cuchillo leads Corbett into all sorts of situations such as a shootout with a group of beefy ranch hands (one of them a super buff looking Romano Puppo) under the spell of one beautiful female landowner.
That scene is just one of many great scenes in the film, my favorite being the scene when Cuchillo makes Corbett think he was bitten by a snake by poking him with a cactus thorn, forcing Corbett to untie Cuchillo so he can suck out the poison and burn the wound. While Lee Van Cleef and Tomas Milian are great in their roles, I don’t think their chemistry is all that great, but most of their scenes are not together. Van Cleef is just simply a badass and stands as one of the best Spaghetti Western actors, and one of the most underappreciated. There is just something about the guy—I mean he seems like he could rip your spleen out with a single dirty look. Milian on the other hand, comes from a different side of the spectrum—he is pure charisma and cool. You can’t help but love Cuchillo, even though he’s a scrawny, cocky, dirty, lying, and through most of the film considered a child raping murderer (!), you can’t help, but like the guy. When we finally find out Cuchillo's not a child rapist afterall, it then becomes safe to root for him, and then it soon becomes clear who the star of the film is. The proof of that last statement is in the film’s sequel RUN, MAN, RUN that stars Milian returning as Cuchillo, but Lee Van Cleef nor his character, does not return.
Sergio Sollima’s directing is excellent here, but even though I like THE BIG GUNDOWN more than it’s sequel, I think Sollima did a better job with RUN, MAN, RUN, which was preceded by FACE TO FACE, part of a Tomas Milian/Sergio Sollima trilogy (yet not a Cuchillo trilogy, he plays a different character in FACE TO FACE). Sollima, like most great directors, got better and better as he went on. Certainly the man’s masterpiece is 1973’s REVOLVER (just my opinion) with Oliver Reed and Fabio Testi.
Lastly, I’ll come full circle with the glue that holds this baby all together, Ennio Morricone’s score. While the opening song may not appeal to everyone, in the same way the main themes for KEOMA and MANNAJA grates on some people nerves, but I love it! It is sung with so much passion by a female vocalist (only credited as Christy on the soundtrack) that it makes me want to find a horse so I can ride off into the sunset. Then there’s “La Resa dei Conti (seconda caccia)” which may be one of my favorite pieces of music period. The whole score is genius as Morricone mostly does variations of the main theme in all sorts of different tempos and styles (something he was known to do quite a bit). I mentioned The Baron’s theme, “La Condanna”, which suits that character to a tee—something else Morricone was great at, never more prevalent than with his score for Sergio Leone’s ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST. Unfortunately, the score will always be bigger than the movie for me, but I still think the movie is great all the same. While the film has not had a proper DVD release in the states, if you’re a fan of Spaghetti Westerns it would behoove you to track down a copy of THE BIG GUNDOWN.
