At the time of The Five Man Army’s release, Peter Graves was roughly midway through his run on TV’s Mission: Impossible. As with that classic series, this Western finds him assembling a group of experts to complete a mission, but director Don Taylor (Damien: Omen II) trades high-tech wows for a lot of dirt and dust.
Graves’ character, The Dutchman, assembles a crack team of rebels to help steal half a million dollars in Mexican Army gold from a train that’s not only moving, but heavily armed. In on the plan are a level-headed buddy (James Daly, 1968’s Planet of the Apes), a cocky local who aims a mean slingshot (Nino Castelnuovo, Strip Nude for Your Killer), a brutish circus acrobat (genre staple Bud Spencer, They Call Me Trinity) and a silent swordsman named, um, Samurai (Tetsurô Tanba, You Only Live Twice).
Memorably, the Dutchman uses burritos to explain his master plan to his amigos. Once that plan is put into practice later, Army becomes a winning effort. Before then, the film is light on action and heavy on conversation (with a script co-written by Dario Argento, one year shy of switching career gears to the giallo), but all that talk serves a purpose in setting up the bickering ways among the quintet. This Army ends shy of being great, but its spy-esque exploits make it a good contender for converting the Western-averse. —Rod Lott
Don’t forget the nifty Ennio Morricone score. Saw the movie at the drive-in long ago.
Ha, clearly I did! Morricone is so damn good, I sometimes take him for granted.