An average movie

Since I had seen all the movies directed by Sergio Leone, except for this one, of course, I was really eager to check it out. It is actually a really obscure feature and since it was Leone’s directing debut, you would assume that it should get at least a little bit of interest. Anyway, I bumped into this dvd while I was on holiday in France so I got lucky, even though, to be honest, it wasn't really good, I'm afraid. Indeed, if you compare it to the other work of Leone, almost all of them masterpieces, the whole thing was just rather messy while his Westerns were usually really focused and minimaslitic. Here, you will have a rather hard time to recognize his great touch. I mean, there might have been a good story there, hidden somewhere, but it was just too ambitious with too many characters and too many intrigues and sub-plots. On top of that, the acting was rather poor and the dialogues were terribly cheesy. At least, the production value was not bad at all with some nice costumes and some awesomely decadent decors. To conclude, even though it wasn’t completely terrible, it was still rather disappointing and I'm not sure if it is really worth a look, except maybe if you are a die-hard fan of Sergio Leone’s work.

5/10