Scott LeBrun Best known for the TV series 'Mission: Impossible' at the time, Peter Graves is similarly in charge of a mission here: rob half a million in gold from a heavily fortified / guarded train. This currency will go towards funding the revolutionaries during the time of the Mexican revolution. Of course, "The Dutchman" (Graves) will need to assemble some men for the mission. They will include a strongman (Bud Spencer), a gambler / explosives expert (James Daly), a samurai (Tetsuro Tanba), and a former circus acrobat (Nino Castelnuovo).While "The 5-Man Army" isn't always that credible (uh, they should be able to *see* you guys hiding under the train, for one thing), it has a wonderful spirit of adventure and excitement. Wonderfully shot by Enzo Barboni, it has just about everything: a good sense of humor, some genuine poignancy, a fair amount of tension, and well executed action. As you can expect, the climactic train robbery doesn't go that smoothly. One of the men will fall off the train, and have to haul ass across the country in order to get back on. And Daly will drop some of his supplies along the way. Some people may feel that the film is too lacking in story, but it shows its audience a good enough time that it doesn't matter all that much. The screenplay is credited to Marc Richards and future director Dario Argento, who actually did some work on this film, and who would make his official debut with "The Bird with the Crystal Plumage" the following year. Although American filmmaker Don Taylor ("Escape from the Planet of the Apes", "The Final Countdown"), a former actor, is given sole credit as director, lovely co-star Daniela Giordano maintains that producer Italo Zingarelli was responsible for much of that task. Composer Ennio Morricone once again displays great talent by coming up with an effectively rousing score. It may not be destined for iconic status, like some of his other work, but it's still enjoyable to listen to.This eclectic team at the heart of the picture is really fun to watch. Graves handles himself with style. Daly has one memorable speech where he feels that he and his comrades won't survive the mission. Spencer is quite amusing, and gets to show off a truly healthy appetite. Young Castelnuovo is a delight as the mouthy Luiz. And Tanba never gets to say much, but he doesn't have to. He still has an effective presence on screen.Highly charged entertainment, with a truly uplifting ending.Eight out of 10.

zardoz-13 "Mission Impossible" star Peter Graves made director Don Taylor's "Un Esercito di Cinque Uomini" while on hiatus from his hit contemporary CBS-TV series, and this epic adventure reunited both the star and the director who had worked together previously on director Billy Wilder's first-class, black & white, World War II P.O.W. classic "Stalag 13" in 1953. "They Call Me Trinity," "Trinity Is Still My Name," and "Sons of Trinity" producer Italo Zingarelli financed this improbable military heist escapade set in 20th century Mexico during the political/agrarian revolution. Scenarists Marc Richards of "Gilligan's Planet" and notable writer & director Dario Argento of "Suspiria" cobble together enough surefire formulaic elements from John Sturges' "The Magnificent Seven," Sam Peckinpah's "The Wild Bunch," and Jules Dassin's "Riffi" to provide audiences with 105 minutes of gripping, flavorful entertainment, especially if you relish Italian westerns lensed on location in sunny Spain.Indeed, "Un Esercito di Cinque Uomini" belongs to a sub-genre of westerns about yet another group of professional warriors coming to the aid of the downtrodden, like "The Magnificent Seven" and its sequels. These westerns became a dime a dozen not only in America, but they also appeared in droves in Europe. In fact, this represented a trend throughout the 1960s and the 1970s and later became a staple of network television with shows like "The A-Team" and "The Unit." The modern day setting that adds trucks and machine guns to the storyline aligns it with "The Wild Bunch" about a gang of American outlaws performing one last mission before the sun sets on them. Furthermore, the mission that these guys are hired to carry out at a thousand dollars per man involves hijacking a heavily armed train. In "The Wild Bunch," the anti-heroes stole munitions from a U.S. Army train, while our heroes rob a military train with a fortune in gold set to the dictator of Mexico—Huerta—to shore up his embattled government.Unlike "The Wild Bunch," the heroes in "Un Esercito di Cinque Uomini" are largely criminals on the run who redeem themselves by helping the working class. In a sense, this movie amounts to a complex amalgamation of the spaghetti western in general as well as the political spaghetti western in particular, movies such as "The Mercenary," "Companeros," "Duck, You Sucker," and "A Bullet for the General." The hybrid nature of Taylor's suspenseful western continues with its casting of Japanese actor Teturo Tamba. "Un Esercito di Cinque Uomini" appears to have pre-dated and perhaps even inspired spaghetti/samurai westerns such as "Red Sun" (1972) with Charles Bronson and Toshirô Mifune, "The Fighting Fists of Shangai Joe" (1972) with Klaus Kinski and Chen Lee, and the Lee Van Cleef oater "The Stranger and the Gunfighter" with Leih Lo, to name a few.The Dutchman (Peter Graves) assembles a crack team at a thousand dollars a man to rob a gold train. He hires Mesito (Bud Spencer of the "Trinity" comedies), Captain Nicolas Augustus (James Daly of "Medical Center"), Samurai (Tetsuro Tamba of "You Only Live Twice") and Luis (Nino Castelnuovo of "Rocco and his Brothers") to help him steal a half-million dollars in gold from a heavily fortified military train. The Dutchman chooses Augustus because the man handles explosives well. He needs the brute strength of Mesito, knife hurling talents of Samurai, and Luis' ability to leap and bound. Each of these characters is essentially on the lam. Mesito is hiding out after a cattle rustling job on a chicken farm when Luis recruits him to the mission. Luis finds Augustus hustling poor miners at poker, and Samurai is performing in a circus. The first hour of the film sets up the plot and the remainder deals with the hijacking and getting away with the loot. Along the way, our heroes get captured by the Mexican Army. Unfortunately, this is the weakest part of the story. They escape from jail far too easily.Naturally, our heroes encounter the inevitable complications that are part and parcel of heist yarns. Nothing can go for long as planned otherwise there would be no suspense and we wouldn't worry about our heroes getting caught. One character loses his nerve in the middle of the robbery, while another falls off the train. The first one has to improvise an explosives device that will blast off a train coupling without alerted everybody with a spectacular blast. The second one—and the best—has Samurai scrambling across country to catch up with the train.The opening credits steeps the viewer in the violence and turmoil of the day with a fascinating, black & white montage of pictures set to one of Ennio Morricone's brilliant orchestral scores. Morricone's music enhances the action whether it require strident music and an evocatively mournful tune. Without Morricone's music, "Un Esercito di Cinque Uomini" would suffer considerably.Richards and Argento never let our characters off the hook from start to finish and Taylor directs with his eye on constant action. Any lulls in the story serve as a way to generate suspense. Taylor's best touch is the lack of dialogue during the actual train hijacking that recalls the quiet robbery in Dassin's "Riffi." Of course, characterization is sketchy, but anything essential to our knowledge is furnished. For example, Dutchman's last minute conversion from mercenary to revolutionary is explained by the death of his Mexican wife, an allusion intentional or otherwise to the Lee Marvin character in Richard Brooks' "The Professionals" (1966) whose wife died at the hands of the Mexican Army so that he works against them in a similar pay-for-hire mission.Altogether, "Un Esercito di Cinque Uomini" qualifies as a solid, suspenseful, spaghetti western version of "Mission: Impossible" with the emphasis on the mission than random gunfights. The last ten minutes involves what appears to be double-crosses and betrayals, but everything works out happily for our heroes who survive several tight spots.

SgtSlaughter American actor Don Taylor tries his hand at directing a truly international "spaghetti western". A fast pace, fine musical score and satisfactory performances hold this rip-off of "The Magnificent Seven" and "The Wild Bunch" together over the course of nearly two hours."The Dutchman" (Peter Graves) recruits for of his old friends to go on a suicide mission. This involves infiltrating, capturing and then making off with a train filled with Mexican Gold. Each will get a small share; the rest will go to aid the Mexican revolutionary forces that the Dutchman has fallen in with.Young writer Dario Argento's script doesn't hold up to his later flair, but keeps the familiar characters and plot line interesting enough to hold dedicated attention. The Dutchman is the typical hero of the piece, and Graves comes to life despite the fact that we know nothing about his background. He seems a little uncomfortable – somewhat uneasy – although his dedication to the robbery is very convincing. He does introduce the 4 members of the "Army" in an obligatory speech, and the rest of the cast stick their characterizations with little or no added ingenuity.First, there's Augustus (James Daly), a grizzled demolition expert who's been in hiding since Spanish-American War. Augustus and Dutchman are two tired, old men and they have a great dramatic discussion reflecting the changing of the times and how they no longer fit into society. Bud Spencer is a lot of fun as the dimwitted Mesito, a giant whose sole redeeming quality seems to be his brute strength. Interestingly enough, Spencer recorded his own dialog in English, and his real voice simply adds to the humor his character – he's got a thick accent, but good command of English, which balances out perfectly. Then there's Samurai (Tetsuro Tamba) a silent warrior who was rescued from a circus sideshow to help carry out the mission. Rounding out the band is Luis, a former acrobat-turned-outlaw who found a home in the Revolution while on the run from the Mexican Army. Throughout the piece, the heroes are out to satisfy their own greed, but a surprise ending ties together all of the loose ends.The musical score of this piece is above-average work from the always-excellent Ennio Morricone, who contributed scores for some of the best spaghetti westerns, including "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly". It's appropriately rousing and adds flair to the exciting moments, and occasional mournful and evocative in the slower, sad sequences – notably, Dutchman's moving speech near the end which explains just why he's in league with the Revolution. He also contributes a fine extended, ultra-weird piece when one main character falls from the train and has to run for several minutes to catch up with his comrades.The film never has a boring moment. Taylor keeps his camera moving in every scene, always showing off sagebrush, pueblos and military garrisons which always look and feel real. The movie is about men on the go – it never stays in one location very long, and while there, something exciting is always happening. Every piece of dialog helps to flesh out the characters or explain the mission further. When people aren't talking, they're in an intense situation – whether it be the ambush of a Mexican truck, escape from a military prison, or the lengthy takeover of the train (which, perhaps, is one of the best extended action sequences ever caught on film) – there is never a dull moment.Taylor manages to keep the action interesting enough and different enough in each scene, too – there's not just lots of fast gun-play going on. There is one notable capture-and-escape sequence involving a heavily fortified Mexican garrison, and the 20+ minute sequence depicting the infiltration and capture of the armored train is nail-biting. The stunts look to be performed by the real actors on a moving train – there is no rear-projection here.The production values are higher than usual for this genre. The crowd scenes are truly massive, and Taylor is able to take time establishing his locations using cranes and long pans before jumping right into the action. Although the first half of the film has a dry, depressing look to it (the exteriors are barren and desolate) the second half features several large, open grassy plains – something not often seen in a film of this kind. The territory surrounding the train, especially, looks vast and open – only once do we notice the painfully obvious presence of a sound-stage, as the characters observe the train from a distance.There are a lot of little things that go wrong with the production or some small parts of the film which lack badly needed care, however, which hamper the effectiveness of the proceedings. The second unit direction seems a bit half-hearted. When extras are shot and die, they slump over with considerable effort and never really look to have been shot. There are also noticeable gaps in logic – the heroes board the train in full view of some very unobservant Mexican guards; the main characters seem afraid of a giant cannon on the train, but it's not as though it can fire at them at such a close range. Also, the engineer (Jose Torres) is taken prisoner because he's allied with the military government, but near the climax, his character disappears. One moment he is standing on the train; in the next shot he is simply gone. What happened to him? In the end, "The Five Man Army" is no more than merely a hash of clichés, but manages to be engaging and entertaining throughout without offering anything new and notable.

agannerkote This movie is definitely one of the all time greatest classics. There isn't a single minute of boredom in the whole movie.Even though there is close to a 30 minutes period in the movie where the only sound is the sound of the train,this shot is very well taken and very gripping.The star cast and the screenplay are amazing!!With every actor carefully chosen for his role!!The whole thing is quite natural! The music from the Great Italian further adorns the movie! The scenes of the exodus of the people, the gathering of the people when the heroes come back with the loot to the village are some of the scenes with excellent music which keeps you humming it for some time after the movie. A western movie without much of the fanfare of bullets but with a plot and superb music, a cute non mushy love story in the middle and star cast can only find its place in the All time Bests!! The movie should be rated along with its contemporary Clint Eastwood movies of Good Bad and the Ugly and a For a Few Dollars More!