Adiós, Sabata (1971)

Too much of everything

Entertaining from beginning to end, it maintains the spirit of the franchise while establishing it's own seal with a fun cast

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

The director, writer, and producer are all the same, and we have several supporting players returning, but Brynner supplants Van Cleef as The Man With The Gunsight Eyes. Does it work? Well, yes, to a point. ADIOS SABATA is, like the other movies in this series, a densely plotted, somewhat tongue-in-cheek western yarn. In each of the Sabata films, I promise you, you will lose track of who is plotting against whom, and with which ne'er-do-wells on his side. There will also be moments of wry humor, along with acrobatic stunt work. And stuff will blow up, and people will be improbably shot from a long distance away.All of that happens in ADIOS, but it happens with Brynner at the helm, so the charisma factor is lessened by a notch or two. Where Van Cleef had steel-eyed machismo and a barbed tongue, ol' Yul provides an exotic gypsy-style appeal, all flowing frills and phallic rifle. For real, this Sabata looks like a backup dancer in a Vegas revue, with his all-black outfit and open-shirt styling. As for the sense-of-humor aspect of the character, Brynner's unusual accent tends to give those sardonic Sabata one-liners a bit of a Schwarzenegger feel, but still yet, he's charming, so it works.Brynner, like LVC, has a great supporting cast to back him up. Returning from the first film (in different roles) are the stolid Gianni Rizzo and the boisterous Pedro Sanchez. American ex-pat Dean Reed is present as a handsome, sleazy sidekick; Gerard Herter portrays a cruel Colonel; and the wonderful Sal Borgese shines as Sabata's mute, music-box-obsessed cohort. All are excellent, with Borgese and Sanchez really notable for fine work.Gianfranco Parolini/Frank Kramer, who handled the direction of all three Sabata flicks, is equally capable of staging big, booming explosions and a subtle eyebrow tilt; I'd say he's more adept at the latter. He gets a lot from a knowing glance, curious peek, or simple crossing of legs, putting each actor's business to great use in moving the story.At 1 hour 44 minutes, ADIOS SABATA gets a little long, with its protracted showdown and search for gold. That said, the pic is an ably-produced, entertaining Spaghetti Western, good of its type, and recommended to fans of its star and genre enthusiasts. 7/10.

Long before the Terminator, Sabata (this time Yul Brynner in his only spaghetti western) uttered the infamous words, "I'll be back." This is the second of Gianfranco Parolini's Sabata trilogy, but it is not a sequel, as the characters and story are different. Like the first, it is also written by Renato Izzo, who went on to write the video nasty Night Train Murders after finishing the trilogy.Brynner had the cool look that probably got him the Westworld gig a few years later.Ignazio Spalla is back from the fist film, but with a different name (Escudo). Maybe he changed it to hide.Sabata joins Escudo and revolutionaries trying to overthrow Austrian Archduke Maximillion, who ruled over Mexico as an imperial dictator; of course, Sabata was only after gold. Others were as well, so it was not a walk in the park.It is fortunate that the Archduke had plenty of soldiers to sacrifice to the cause.Well, Lee Van Cleef, Ignazio Spalla, and Aldo Canti will be back in the final Sabata film.

Although originally not intended as a sequel to the Sabato-films, the theme song tries real hard to help us memorizing the protagonist's name. It's a cool song, nevertheless, but the singer repeats the name "Sabato" at least 30 times in only 3 minutes, and there aren't much other lyrics... Anyways, "Adios Sabato" is a pretty awesome spaghetti-western with many great plot lines, entire truckloads of exciting action sequences and an unusually high amount of truly ingenious gimmicks. One western legend replaces the other, as no one less than Yul Brynner takes over the titular role from Lee Van Cleef, who sadly couldn't make it back to Italy in time to reprise his role. The opening scenes show Sabato dueling fellow gunslingers for money, but he soon joins a group of Mexican rebels in their everlasting quest against sadistic Austrian army troops. When Sabato and his outrageously eccentric Mexican friends steal a chest full of gold, they have to gunfight their way back to freedom. There's not a minute going by without director Gianfranco Paroline adding some kind of exhilarating twist or impressively staged action-stunt. Whenever they're not hunting for gold, the heroes as well as the super-mean villains pass their time playing violent shooting games, whether it's recruiting the most courageous new warrior or simply aiming at poor Mexican prisoners for the sake of amusement. Yul Brynner's character is in many ways reminiscent to Chris Adams; the heroic cowboy leader of "The Magnificent Seven". Sabato (or Indio Black, if you insist) is a silent but extremely authoritative figure, and it's actually his Mexican companions who are the more enthusiast fighters. One of them creatively kills his opponents by foot-kicking metal bullet-like projectiles at them and another one, Gitano, always offers his victims a nifty flamenco-dance before wasting them. Colonel Skimmel, the Austrian über-villain has an inventive collection murderous toys as well, most notably a miniature model ship of which the little canons fire off actual bullets whenever an unwelcome intruder opens the wrong drawer. Like I said, "Adios Sabato" is stuffed with remarkably cool gimmicks that all help making the film delightfully comical and almost cartoonish even. As always, Bruno Nicolai provides a wondrous musical score with catchy tunes and whistles. Nicolai was a brilliant Italian composer, on par with Riz Ortolani and actually not too far behind on Ennio Morricone. Imaginative camera-work and splendid editing also contribute in making "Adios Sabato" another absolute winner in the terrific genre of spaghetti-westerns.

Sort of sequel to the earlier Sabata with Lee Van Cleef, this was filmed as Indio Black and is known as that in several countries. The title was changed when the distributor paid for the right to use the name Sabata from the original films producer. The result is Sabata becomes a dead ringer for Chris, Yul Brynner's character from the Magnificent Seven films (a character Van Cleef was playing in a movie shot at the same time as this).Aren't the back stage maneuvering of Spaghetti Westerns fun? Some times the stories are more fun than the movies.Fortunately this movie is more fun than the story.The plot has Sabata (Yul Brenner) helping Mexican revolutionaries attempting to over throw the Emperor Maximilian. Sabata is to steal some gold and then use it to buy guns to attack an evil General. However things don't go as planned and when they go to steal the gold someone else is already there. Add to the whole mix spies, greed and some odd left turns and you get one entertaining, but not very coherent movie.Don't get me wrong I like this movie a great deal, I just wish it made some sense. Characters appear out of left field when it suits the plot, people don't do anything logical (I mean if you just stole a wagon full of gold you'd make sure that the gold was really there wouldn't you?), after a certain point its never clear if they are keeping the gold or giving it to the revolution. Its enough to drive you crazy if you let it. I didn't since a good many of the spaghetti westerns I've seen make even less sense then this one.If you like Westerns this is one to see. Its perfect for a rainy Sunday afternoon. I'm still not sure if I think of Brenner's character as Sabata, but it doesn't matter since no matter what he's called he's a kick ass hero with a smart ass mouth. What more could you want?