Original title: Testa o Croce?

While touring in regional Italy in the late 1800s, ‘Buffalo’ Bill Cody (John C Reilly) makes a bet with a local big-wig that his horse riders can beat the local Italian cowboys. The big wig decided to tip the odds in his favour by betting it all on the foreigner and telling the local rider Santino (Alessandro Borghi) to take a dive. When he refuses and ends up winning there is a scuffle in the stables which leads to the big wig’s wife Rosa (Nadia Tereszkiewicz) ends up shooting them and they have to go on the run which is where the story really begins!

This is an old-style spaghetti western like the old and weird ones that used to screen on SBS TV in the 1990s with the intro and outro for several years and then repeat. Quite apart from the fact that there is a disembodied head talking for quite a lot of the movie and some of the scenes you are not sure actually happened at all everything feels a bit off and weird like they used to with the old movies where they pretended were in the old west but were shot in Europe for cheap.

John C Reilly is not really in the movie as much as the publicity for it would have you believe but does seem to be having the most fun. He even gets to do a song near the end and seems to be making the most of it.

It is quite violent in some places but not as violent as a lot of these sorts of movies. Women do tend to get the upper hand in a lot of situations which is not the case in a lot of other movies of this ilk but I would warn of that going in if you are sensitive of movies with violence against women.

It does seem quite contemporary in some places with Rosa criticising Buffalo Bill about using violence to complete his ends and one character reading from newspaper reports about his Wild West show being exploitative. You might think these things are a modern insert but having read newspapers from that period they can often surprise you in their views that seem reasonable and modern at times.

I have already recommended this movie to spaghetti western fans but with the advisory of it not being a “straight” type movie with all the normal stuff. If you go along for the ride then you will enjoy yourself.

Film details:

Director: Alessio Rigo de Righi, Matteo Zoppis

Producer: Alex C. Lo, Tommaso Bertani, Paolo Del Brocco

Screenwriter: Carlo Salsa, Matteo Zoppis, Alessio Rigo de Righi

Cinematographer: Simone d’Arcangelo

Composer: Vittorio Giampietro

Editor: Andrés Pepe Estrada, Jacopo Ramella Pajrin

Key Cast: Gianni Garko, Nadia Tereszkiewicz, John C. Reilly, Gabrielle Silli, Alessandro Borghi, Mirko Artuso, Peter Lanzani

Genre: Drama, Western

Country: USA, Italy

Language: English, Italian

Length: 86min

Trailer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5lfIXQfENh4