Death Sentence

An “episodic" spaghetti western which, mainly in the first half, is a credit to classics (not just) of this genre. It is all connected by the character gradually taking revenge on his brother’s four murderers. Each part has its own peculiar style which mostly draws from the excellent idea that Cash won’t avenge his brother by simple shooting, but he would take revenge slowly, step by step, meaning that each target is tortured mentally, using their weakness against them, the actual showdown coming later... The first “desert" episode (5/5) draws on a nice, not “black-and-white", not evil adversary, the atmosphere of the scorching desert, the idea with the stones and the great shootout in the hacienda. It is a rather premature climax, even though not obvious, because although the second “poker" part (5/5) immediately relaxes the tempo, it loses no quality. The third “Mexican priest" act (5/5) has primarily a marvelous, charismatic villain, length just right (it is the shortest of all) and has a very ingenious “MacGyver-esque" ending. The last short story is a double episode. It has the same villain (unnecessarily overzealous, cheaply demonic - it is just a character, not a persona like the one before him, but Milian tries his hardest, I’m telling you), but these are more like two separate parts. The first “bank" part (4/5) is not so bad, while the second “cemetery" part (2/5) is so average and bland that it is below-average. Despite that last episode, overall I give this a full set of stars, because originality is greatly appreciated, while writing this review I found myself whistling the theme tune and mainly - I can’t get the first three stories out of my head. I will certainly come back to this again. And very gladly, too. (22/01/2011)