django director sergio corbucci spaghetti western the mercenary about an itinerant polish pistolero sergei kowalski ( franco nero of camelot ) in mexico at the turn of the century who take a poor ignorant peasant ( tomas musante of the bird with the crystal plumage ) under his gun arm and elevate him to the status of hero of the mexican revolution beat sergio leone duck and you sucker by three year . in duck and you sucker and an irish revolutionary ( james coburn ) take a penniless peasant ( rod steiger ) and elevate him to the status of pancho villa during the mexican revolution . indeed and the basic plot of the mercenary and duck and you sucker resemble each other closely and except the character and the ending differ drastically . the peasant here in the mercenary be paco roman and a young and wifeless and childless and blue collar laborer toiling in the mine of a wealthy aristocrat with a taste for opera . in duck and you sucker and the peasant be much old and with a brood of trigger happy son and and a passion for thievery . in retrospect and the similarity between the mercenary and duck and you sucker shouldn not seem too surprisingly when you consider that the same scenarist and luciano vincenzoniwho pen death ride a horse and for a few dollar more and and the good and the bad and and the uglywrote both the mercenary and duck and you sucker . the mercenary be corbucci first mexican revolutionary western that he would follow up with companeros star franco nero a a swedish arm dealer and tomas milian a the mexican peasant and and jack palance a the villain . the mercenary open in an arena with clown simulate a bullfight . the main clown be really paco while he be on the run from wealthy mine owner alfonso garcía ( eduardo fajardo of bad man river ) and a deadly but dandify gambler curly ( jack palance ) who be in league with garcia . the polish gunman kowalski ( nero ) sit in the stand and watch paco until the time for the sundown come . at that point and corbucci and his multitude of writersamong them franco solinas of a bullet for the general and vincenzoniflash back to the first meeting between our hero who later become fast friend . two mexican mine owner pay kowalski to get their silver . curly follow them after he see them talk to kowalski . curly be deeply interested in them because he have to have one of his henchman and stud ( franco ressel of sabata ) and kill for try to kill kowalski . you see and kowalski caught stud gamble with loaded dice and make him swallow the dice with a glass of milk . anyway and curly kill the two mexican and rid out to get the silver and kowalski . meanwhile and at the mine and paco and his fellow minersexploited at poverty wagesdine on execrable food and paco discovers a lizard in his food . everybody have a good laugh about the ameat in the grub . later and in garcia office and the mine owner come face to face with paco hold a pig on a platter with a pistol stick out of it mouth . paco hand feed garcia the lizard and the two be enemy for life . when kowalski show up to pick up the money and he find himself surround by paco and his men . they be go to kill the polish gunman until the mexican army and with a vengeful garcia in the rank and intervenes with an artillery barrage . vincenzoni write a similar scene in leone the good and the bad and and the ugly a tuco be about to hang blonde from a hotel rafter . in the middle of all the shooting and the wealthy paco explain that the silver can never be get to but he have fistfuls of paper money . he pay kowalski to teach him how to operate a machine gun and the two become revolutionary . kowalski take his hard earn money and leave paco and only to be trap in the desert by curly and his gunman . this time paco intervenes in the showdown between kowalski and curly and kill all of curly men and force curly to walk away without a stitch of clothing on in humiliation . now and curly have it in for paco as well a the polish soldier of fortune . essentially and kowalski teach paco how to run a revolution until an interfere woman columba ( giovanna ralli of cannon for cordoba ) join them and turn paco against his pal . a they make more money and kowalski demand become outrageous . he prefer to be pay in coin and he force paco army to stop in the middle of the desert so that he can improvise a shower to cool himself off . no sooner have paco and columba wed and leave kowalski tie up in a stable than garcia and curly arrive and again with the mexican army and a bi plane that drop bomb . spaghetti director sergio corbucci write and direct twice as many western a sergio leone . corbucci lack leone flamboyant style and his lucky break in establish the italian western . nevertheless and he be his equal when it come to stag gunfight and helm snappy action story . franco nero become his clint eastwood and corbucci gain fame a burt reynolds call him the other sergio for his diverse oaters . corbucci buck the outhwest look of spaghetti western with his oddball oater the great silence and his muddy western django where the hero drag around a coffin with a machine gun stash in it . corbucci maintain a furious pace throughout the mercenary and even though it start up with a flashback and sacrifice some suspensebecause you know the principal can not die until the flashback end . predictably and the body count be as high a the film cynicism . at one point and curly jam a hand grenade into a revolutionary soldier mouth and blow him up . however and corbucci show uncharacteristic flair when he stag a killing and a torture scene and decline to show the violence in each scene . in one scene and a thug batter the truth out of an unwilling victim while we watch curly ride around in a circle . this kind of subtlety be very unusual for a spaghetti western .