The Mercenary (film)
Encyclopedia
The Mercenary also known as A Professional Gun, is a 1968 spaghetti western
Spaghetti Western
Spaghetti Western, also known as Italo-Western, is a nickname for a broad sub-genre of Western films that emerged in the mid-1960s in the wake of Sergio Leone's unique and much copied film-making style and international box-office success, so named by American critics because most were produced and...

 film directed by Sergio Corbucci
Sergio Corbucci
Sergio Corbucci was an Italian film director. He is best known for his very violent yet intelligent spaghetti westerns...

. The film stars Franco Nero
Franco Nero
Franco Nero is an Italian actor.-Early life:Nero was born Francesco Sparanero in San Prospero Parmense , the son of a sergeant in the...

, Jack Palance
Jack Palance
Jack Palance , was an American actor. During half a century of film and television appearances, Palance was nominated for three Academy Awards, all as Best Actor in a Supporting Role, winning in 1991 for his role in City Slickers.-Early life:Palance, one of five children, was born Volodymyr...

, Tony Musante
Tony Musante
Anthony Peter Musante is an American actor.Musante was born in Bridgeport, Connecticut, the son of Natalie Anne , a school teacher, and Anthony Peter Musante, an accountant. He attended Oberlin College and Northwestern University.Musante has acted in numerous feature films, in the United States...

 and Giovanna Ralli
Giovanna Ralli
Giovanna Ralli is an Italian actress. She was born in Rome, 2 January 1935.Ralli won a Nastro d'Argento for her supporting role in C'eravamo tanto amati.- Filmography :* I bambini ci guardano by Vittorio De Sica...

, and features a musical score by Ennio Morricone
Ennio Morricone
Ennio Morricone, Grand Officer OMRI, , is an Italian composer and conductor, who wrote music to more than 500 motion pictures and television series, in a career lasting over 50 years. His scores have been included in over 20 award-winning films as well as several symphonic and choral pieces...

 and Bruno Nicolai
Bruno Nicolai
Bruno Nicolai was an Italian film music composer, orchestra director and musical editor most active in the 1960s through the 1980s...

. The film takes place during the Mexican Revolution
Mexican Revolution
The Mexican Revolution was a major armed struggle that started in 1910, with an uprising led by Francisco I. Madero against longtime autocrat Porfirio Díaz. The Revolution was characterized by several socialist, liberal, anarchist, populist, and agrarianist movements. Over time the Revolution...

 and is a well-known example of the "Zapata Western" subgenre.

The Mercenary was released the same year as Corbucci's more popular western, The Great Silence
The Great Silence
The Great Silence , or The Big Silence, is an Italian spaghetti western. It is widely considered by critics as the masterpiece of director Sergio Corbucci and is one of his better known movies, along with Django...

(Il grande silenzio). The film is often compared to Corbucci's 1970 film, Compañeros
Compañeros
Compañeros is an Italian Zapata-themed spaghetti western film directed by Sergio Corbucci in 1970. The film stars Franco Nero, Tomas Milian, Jack Palance and Fernando Rey...

(Vamos a matar, compañeros), which features Nero and Palance in similar roles, and Tomas Milian
Tomas Milian
Tomás Milián is a Cuban-American actor best known for having worked extensively in Italian films from the late 1950s to the 1980s.-Career in Italy:...

 in a role similar to Musante's in The Mercenary. Both films also had Morricone as the composer, Alejandro Ulloa as the cinematographer and Eugenio Alabiso as the editor. The Mercenary's theme music L'arena was later used by Quentin Tarantino
Quentin Tarantino
Quentin Jerome Tarantino is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, cinematographer and actor. In the early 1990s, he began his career as an independent filmmaker with films employing nonlinear storylines and the aestheticization of violence...

 in the 2004 film Kill Bill: Vol. 2.

Plot

Paco Roman (Musante), a Mexican
Mexico
The United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...

 peasant
Peasant
A peasant is an agricultural worker who generally tend to be poor and homeless-Etymology:The word is derived from 15th century French païsant meaning one from the pays, or countryside, ultimately from the Latin pagus, or outlying administrative district.- Position in society :Peasants typically...

, rebels against his rich boss and humiliates him. He is later captured, but saved from a certain death by his friends. Meanwhile, Sergei Kowalski (Nero), a Polish
Poland
Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...

 mercenary, arrives in Mexico and makes a deal with two Garcia brothers to take their silver safely across the border. Curly (Palance) sees the three men talking and tracks down the brothers to find out what they hired Kowalski for, after which Curly kills the two.

When Kowalski arrives at a mine to meet one of the Garcia brothers, he finds the man along with many others dead and meets Paco and his revolutionaries instead. Soon after, Colonel Alfonso Garcia's (Eduardo Fajardo
Eduardo Fajardo
Eduardo Fajardo is a Spanish film actor. He appeared in over 160 films between 1947 and 2002.He was born in Pontevedra, Spain.-Selected filmography:* Reckless * Tizoc * Django...

) Mexican army troops attack. Kowalski agrees to help Paco fight them, but only for money as he is a professional soldier. With the help of Kowalski and his machine gun
Machine gun
A machine gun is a fully automatic mounted or portable firearm, usually designed to fire rounds in quick succession from an ammunition belt or large-capacity magazine, typically at a rate of several hundred rounds per minute....

, the revolutionaries defeat the army. Kowalski then leaves the group, but gets ambushed by Curly. Soon Paco's group arrives and kills Curly's men. Although Curly swears to revenge, they let him go after stripping him of his clothes. Paco then hires Kowalski to teach him how to lead a revolution.

The revolutionaries travel from town to town robbing money, guns and horses from the army. They also release a prisoner named Columba (Ralli) and she joins the group. After Paco stays in one town to protect the people despite Kowalski telling him that they can not match the army sent to capture them, Kowalski leaves the group again. Paco and his men later admit their defeat and go after Kowalski. Kowalski's price has doubled now, but the two make another deal. After the revolutionaries take over a town by defeating a whole regiment, Paco takes Kowalski as prisoner for being too greedy, confiscates all the money he has paid him and marries Columba. When General Garcia's army, along with Curly, attack them, Paco realizes he can not manage the situation on his own and decides to set Kowalski free, but ends up locked up himself while Kowalski escapes. Columba frees Paco and the two also manage to escape before Curly finds them.

After six months, Kowalski attends a circus
Circus
A circus is commonly a travelling company of performers that may include clowns, acrobats, trained animals, trapeze acts, musicians, hoopers, tightrope walkers, jugglers, unicyclists and other stunt-oriented artists...

 performance and notices that Paco managed to get away after all, as he is one of the clowns
Circus clown
Clowns have always been an integral part of the circus, offering a source of amusement for patrons and providing relief from the array of animal acts and performances by acrobats and novelty artistes....

. After the performance is over, Curly enters the arena and his men capture Paco. Kowalski then shoots Curly's men and gives him and Paco both a rifle and a bullet, so that the two can have a fair duel
Duel
A duel is an arranged engagement in combat between two individuals, with matched weapons in accordance with agreed-upon rules.Duels in this form were chiefly practised in Early Modern Europe, with precedents in the medieval code of chivalry, and continued into the modern period especially among...

. After Paco kills Curly, Kowalski takes him as a prisoner and heads to the headquarters of the 51st Regiment to collect the reward offered for his head. Columba sees this, manages to get before them to the headquarters and then pretends that she wants to betray Paco by telling where the two are.

When the army troops find the pair, Kowalski also finds himself arrested as there is now even a bigger reward for his head. The two are then sentenced to death by firing squad. However, Columba now executes her plan and with the help of two machine guns, Paco, Kowalski and Columba manage to escape. Kowalski suggests Paco that they team up to make a lot of money, but Paco claims that his dream is in Mexico referring to the revolution. The two part ways, but Kowalski soon notices five Mexican army soldiers after Paco. Kowalski kills them when they are about to shoot Paco, and then yells to him to "keep dreaming, but with your eyes open."
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