The Big Gundown [4 Discs] [Blu-ray/DVD/CD]

Director: Sergio Sollima Sergio Sollima

Overview

Jonathan Corbett (Lee Van Cleef) is one of the top lawmen in the State of Texas. He's so good at what he does, that he's been approached by Brokston (Walter Barnes), a wealthy speculator and power-broker, about running for the United States Senate. But there's one job that needs doing first which, if Corbett can finish it, will put him in an unchallengable position -- he has to hunt down and capture (dead or alive, with the emphasis on "dead") Cuchillo Sanchez (Tomas Milian), who's wanted for raping and killing a 12-year-old girl. Corbett does what he does best, pursuing Sanchez relentlessly and on his own level of intense brutality, past the border and into Mexico -- but along the way, Corbett learns what life is like for peasants like Sanchez, and what men like Brokston have to do with it. And he discovers that Sanchez may not be the murderer that Corbett thinks he is.

Product Details

Release Date:	12/10/2013
UPC:	0797679000928
Original Release:	1966
Rating:	R
Source:	Grindhouse Releasing
Region Code:	A
Sound:	[Dolby Digital Stereo]
Language:	English
Time:	1:50:00

Special Features

Exclusive, in-depth interviews with Sergio Sollima, Tomas Milian and Sergio Donati; Audio Commentary by Western film experts C. Courtney Joyner and Henry C. Parke; Liner notes by C. Courtney Joyner and Euro-music expert Gergely Hubai; Extensive still galleries; Trailers; TV spots

Cast & Crew

Performance Credits

Lee Van Cleef	Jonathan 'Colorado' Corbett
Tomas Milian	Manuel 'Cuchillo' Sanchez
Luisa Rivelli	Prostituée
Fernando Sancho	Capt. Segura
Nieves Navarro	Widow
Benito Stefanelli	Jess
Walter Barnes	Brokston
Lanfranco Ceccarelli	Jack,Jack
Roberto Camardiel	Jellicol
Nello Pazzafini	Hondo
Spartaco Conversi	Mitchell
Romano Puppo	Rocky
Tom Felleghy	Chet
Calisto Calisti	Miller
Antonio Casas	Dance
Jose Torres	Nathan,Nathan
Nieves Novarro	la veuve
Gérard Herter	le baron von Schulenberg
María Granada	Rosita
Ángel del Pozo	Chet Miller
Antonio Molino Rojo	Widow's ranchero
Silvana Bacci	Mexican prostitute
Luis Barboo	Widow's Ranchero
Barta Barri	Nathan Plummer - Old Outlaw
Fernando Bilbao	Widow's Ranchero
Maria Cristina Brancucci	The Balladeer
Frank Braña	Widow's ranchero
Amerigo Castrighella	Don Gomez Serrano henchman
Alberigo Donadeo	Actor
Raniero Dorascenzi	Wedding Guest Standing Beside Swing
Attilio Dottesio	Mexican Officer
Luis Gaspar	Young outlaw
Sergio Sollima	Actor
Ennio Morricone	Composer
Riz Ortolani	Composer

Technical Credits

Sergio Sollima

Franco Solinas

Fernando Morandi

Sergio Donati

Tulio Demicheli

Alberto Grimaldi	Producer
Sergio Sollima	Director,Screenwriter
Franco Solinas	Screenwriter
Fernando Morandi	Screenwriter
Sergio Donati	Screenwriter
Tulio Demicheli	Producer,Screenwriter
Renato Cadueri	Sound Effects
Pietro Spadoni	Sound Effects
Bernard Grant	Sound Effects

Editorial Reviews

Most critics who didn't know any better used to dismiss the so-called "spaghetti westerns" of the 1960s as nothing but gory shoot-'em-ups. Sergio Sollima's La Resa dei Conti (aka The Big Gundown) shows, as much as Sergio Leone's The Good, The Bad & The Ugly, precisely how unfair that assessment was -- and while it might lack the scope and ambition of that Leone movie, it's just about in the same league in terms of the rewards that it offers. Even in it's heavily edited US version, which is missing 20 minutes of the original 105-minute Italian release, this movie is chockful of meanings and messages, as well as a lot of heart and even some humor (albeit of the "gallows" variety, once quite literally). Lee Van Cleef, fresh from his two Leone pictures (For A Few Dollars More andThe Good, The Bad & The Ugly), turns in a powerful performance as Jonathan Corbett, once a lawman and now a bounty hunter -- and the top man in both fields in his part of Texas -- who discovers that the powerful people who want to make use of his talents are actually more dangerous than many of the men he has been hunting. It is the mid-1870s, and the robber-barons of the southwest are asserting themselves and their wealth -- Walter Barnes' Mr. Brockston is just such a man, who has linked up with his opposite number in Mexico in hope of building a railroad that will link the two countries (and make Brockston and his allies even more powerful). But Corbett, sent by Brockston to bring in a Mexican criminal (Tomas Milian) who is wanted for the rape and murder of a 12-year-old girl (and is expected to bring him in dead) soon discovers that not all is at it seems -- that the man he's hunting, whatever else he may have done, may not have committed those particular crimes; and that this semi-official man-hunt may be hiding a much more sinister truth about Brockston and his family. He also discovers that the wealthy Mexicans treat their peasants, including the man he is hunting, worse than animals or slaves; and that Brockston isn't different from any of them, in terms of the people who work for him, including Corbett. It's all a reminder to the lawman (and the US audience, at least), of what it means to be an American, and the meaning of our revolution and the promise that the United States should offer to its neighbors and to people all over the world. Of course, this serious message -- which lies just beneath the surface -- is presented with a furious and graceful assembly of violent and exciting actual sequences, often laced with humor, which was what most audiences were paying to see back in 1967, when it opened around the world. They got a lot more than they bargained for, and the movie holds up astonishingly well, today regarded -- along with Leone's Clint Eastwood trilogy -- as among the finest of the spaghetti western genre. Indeed, seen decades on from its origins, The Big Gundown now compares favorably with such American-made genre classics as Sam Peckinpah's Major Dundee (with which it shares some aspects of its message). The Italian version, which runs considerably longer, has more depth and also more sustained violence -- that 105-minute edition was shown for the first time (with subtitles) in the United States in June of 2012 at New York's Film Forum, as part of a month-long retrospective on Italian westerns.