Verdict
Summary
A mystery spaghetti western rather than a simple shoot-’em-up type film, Forgotten Pistolero is a pretty solid little film from director Fernando Baldi (Comin’ At Ya! Treasure of the Four Crowns, Get Mean), and while it takes a slightly different approach to the standard-issue Italian-style western, it’s basically everything you would want from the genre with sweaty, swarthy heroes, scuzzy villains, beautiful women, and an appropriate score to boot.
Plot:
Two pistoleros team up for the truth about one of their origins … and his revenge.
Review:
Two “pistoleros” (gunfighters) – Sebastian (Leonard Mann) and Rafael (Peter Martell) – reunite after many years apart. Lifelong buddies and soul brothers, they realize that life has really trashed their spirits and lives, despite having led different lives and experienced different things. Sebastian, as a child, loved his beautiful mother (played by Luciana Paluzzi from Thunderball), not realizing that she and her lover, a wealthy man named Tomas (Alberto de Mendoza), murdered his father and ran off together with his sister Isabella (Pilar Velazquez), who witnessed the whole thing. Sebastian was sent away and grew up as an orphan, which is how he met Rafael, and Rafael has always lived in the shadow of his friend, who never had trouble with girls or women, to this day. Rafael has made it his life’s mission to try to help Sebastian discover the truth about his life, and when he figures it out, he makes an effort to prove it to his friend that it was his mother who is to blame. He points his friend to the threads of his old, forgotten life, and when they go back to the town where Sebastian grew up and where his mother is still living with the man who killed his father, they stir up a hornet’s nest. Revenge won’t be as easy as just showing up with a gun, no: They’ll need to confront Sebastian’s mother and discover the truth that might shatter them both.
A mystery spaghetti western rather than a simple shoot-’em-up type film, Forgotten Pistolero is a pretty solid little film from director Fernando Baldi (Comin’ At Ya! Treasure of the Four Crowns, Get Mean), and while it takes a slightly different approach to the standard-issue Italian-style western, it’s basically everything you would want from the genre with sweaty, swarthy heroes, scuzzy villains, beautiful women, and an appropriate score to boot. It’s good, but not exactly a classic, which puts you at about the mid-range zone for this type of film. I enjoyed it, and it goes by quickly at less than 90 minutes.
Diabolik – an online outlet for DVDs and Blu-rays from around the world – has made this their first official in-house release, and it comes with two discs – each a Blu-ray but each one is a different language (English and Italian), and special features include an interview with Leonard Mann and a trailer. The transfer is solid in 1080p widescreen, looking strong and vivid with a satisfying image that I could find no fault in. Recommended if priced well.
