Wonderful Westerns: ‘The Professionals’ (1966)
One of my favorite sub-genres of film is what I call “the special skills squad films.” These movies usually involve a group of men/women who are very skilled in a certain area who are chosen to take part in a mission to either rescue someone, sabotage something, or pull off a bank heist. What usually makes these appealing to me are the members of the group, because to me, it’s very cool to see these different people of different backgrounds play off each other. Even though I do enjoy this group of films greatly, I can’t deny that these movies can suffer from one major problem: The profession/skill of the people is in essentially their sole characteristic and nothing else. If you remember, that was one of the main problems I had with The Magnificent Seven Ride! But thankfully, that’s not the case with this week’s film, The Professionals (1966), directed by Richard Brooks.
In latter days of the Mexican Revolution, four men are hired by wealthy tycoon Joe Grant (Ralph Bellamy) to go into Mexico and rescue his kidnapped wife, Maria (Claudia Cardinale), from former Revolutionary leader-turned-bandit named Jesus Raza (Jack Palance), “Jesus, what a name for the bloodiest cutthroat in Mexico.”
The group consists of: the leader, Henry “Rico” Fardan (Lee Marvin), a former Army officer who specializes in weapons and tactics; Hans Ehrengard (Robert Ryan), who’s the group’s horse wrangler and pack master; Jake Sharp (Woody Strode), a scout and sharpshooter; and explosives expert and womanizer Bill Dolworth (Burt Lancaster).
Each character, however, is clearly more than just his title and what his role is in the team; as the film progresses, you see how they operate as a unit and how each one of them contributes to the team — all without forced dialogue moments that bring the film to a halt. It also follows the main rule of film: It shows; it doesn’t tell. We see how each of these men are qualified for their own fields through nicely detailed moments. This kind of stuff starts right at the beginning of the film with the four introduced while performing their tasks, sans Lancaster, who’s taking part in his other character trait. Wink wink, nudge nudge, say no more.
It’s because of stuff like this that make this one of the smartest films script-wise in the Western genre. There’s never a moment that makes me bash my head in because of an idiot character moment. If the character does do something stupid, then it’s portrayed as such.
To further describe the plot would mean spoiling it and its twists, and I won’t take away the element of surprise for you. Trust me folks, this is a film where you want to go in blind and wait for the plot to unravel. Do not Google!
With an amazing cast, a fantastic music score by Maurice Jarre, great cinematography, direction, action scenes, and quite possibly one of the best final lines ever in cinema. Again, I dare not ruin it for you. Check it out.
