This popular latter-day Spaghetti Western proved a disappointment overall, considering the talents involved; to begin with, I've always been wary of semi-comic genre entries such as this – which stars one of its major exponents, Terence Hill (in fact, I recall having misgivings about even his MY NAME IS NOBODY [1973]): incidentally, that film was produced by the foremost director of Spaghetti Westerns – Sergio Leone – who was also involved with this one in an uncredited capacity (as a matter of fact, the striking and violent opening sequence is attributed to him!).

Anyway, the film clearly owes a huge debt to Leone's THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY (1966) – several genre outings, actually, tried to cash-in on that classic by devising (often amusing) variants on its title – though there are so many characters involved that it's hard to determine who the various epithets are referring to! The international cast, then, includes – besides Italian Hill – Irishman Patrick MacGoohan (though playing a U.S. Cavalry officer), French Miou-Miou and Robert Charlebois, and German Klaus Kinski (appearing in a bit early on as a gambler/gunslinger). Director Damiani had dabbled in the genre previously with one of the politically-oriented efforts, A BULLET FOR THE GENERAL (1967); the film under review, though, isn't nearly as stylish or engaging – also, as with a number of examples of its kind, it's overstretched for no real purpose!

Another underwhelming element here is the score by "Euro-Cult" guru/genre stalwart Ennio Morricone – while pleasant in itself and occasionally inventive, it's decidedly forgettable in the long run: it seems he'd been doing it for so long that inspiration had pretty much withered by this time! There's not even that much action throughout the film: it's merely a collection of incidents which sees opportunistic Hill, gruff and dim-witted Charlebois (who's not only unhappy to be constantly reminded of his Indian heritage but he gets to negotiate terms with them over land rights while posing as a U.S. Colonel!), charming Miou-Miou, and shrewd villain MacGoohan (who's wasted here: what was he thinking?!) teaming up and/or double-crossing each other for possession of the proverbial booty (the plot, thin and all-too-typical – as can be surmised – is still separated by a good deal of padding). To be fair, the film is mildly enjoyable as such (a reasonable assessment for an outing emanating so late in the game) – but hardly unmissable as Spaghetti Westerns go