| Overview: | Throughout his career, Valerii directed three miniseries for television and sixteen theatrical films. His apprenticeship as assistant director with Sergio Leone on FISTFUL OF DOLLARS mid FOR A FEW DOLLARS MORE influenced his own style on the five Italian Westerns he directed including DAY OF ANGER with Lee Van Cleef and TASTE OF KILLING, both available from Wild East, as well as the amazing PRICE OF POWER with Giuliano Gemma and the inspired MY NAME IS NOBODY with Henry Fonda and Terence Hill.
A REASON TO LIVE, A REASON TO DIE is a highly entertaining Civil War derivative of THE DIRTY DOZEN. Union Colonel Pembroke (James Coburn, having just completed DUCK, YOU SUCKER for Leone) rescues seven condemned men from the gallows in order to attack impregnable Fort Holman, commanded by insane Confederate Major Frank Ward (Telly Savalas), ostensibly because of the fortress' strategic location as the key to the significant routes of the American Southwest. In fact, Pembroke wants revenge for Ward's cowardly and unjust murder of Pembroke's son. The film follows the adventures of the eight men as they make their way to Fort Holman and culminates with a lengthy and stirring battle in which most men on both sides are massacred.
A REASON TO LIVE TO LIVE, A REASON TO DIE comes with an impressive pedigree of artists. Valerii co-scripted the film with the creative Ernesto Gastaldi (THE MAN FROM NOWHERE, DAY OF ANGER, THE GRAND DUEL and MY NAME IS NOBODY). Allejandro Ulloa (Sergio Corbucci's COMPANEROS and THE MERCENARY) contributed the impressive sun-scortched cinematapgraphy. Riz Ortolan! wrote a partial, highly atmospheric score when budgetary problems forced him to pirate music from DAY OF ANGER for one or two brief moments. The performances are uniformly effective from James Coburn's snarling, revenge-driven anti-hero to Telly Savalas' off-kilter psychopath and Bud Spencer's sympathetic Eli Sampson, one of the "condemned" seven.
Unfairly considered by critics who saw butchered versions of the film to be Valerii's least significant Spaghetti Western, A REASON TO LIVE, A REASON TO DIE is neverthleless a thrilling, action-packed film.
|
tell us what you
