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Boring

Absolutely Fantastic

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

The storyline feels a little thin and moth-eaten in parts but this sequel is plenty of fun.

Alex Cord plays Clay McCord(how apt!), an outlaw who has traveled to New Mexico on the promise of amnesty given by its governor(Robert Ryan). Unfortunately, Clay gets challenged by the local sheriff(Arthur Kennedy) who doesn't agree with the governor's plans, and decides to use Clay to lure other outlaws to the state, so that he can deal with them all at once. This leads to a big showdown at the end.Not bad western is clearly based on the style of the Sergio Leone westerns, and is a decent attempt at doing so, though of course is not as stylish or memorable. Good cast, and an interesting character detail of Clay having epilepsy like his father, which sometimes makes him vulnerable.

"Sugar Colt" director Franco Giraldi's above-average Spaghetti western "A Minute to Pray, A Second to Die" is grim and cynical with a trio of Americans: Alex Cord, Arthur Kennedy, and Robert Ryan. Composer Carlo Rustichelli contributes an atmospheric score, and "Keoma" lenser Aiace Parolin makes everything look Euro-western cool. All the shots are perfectly composed with regard to the players on camera and the arena of action. Louis Garfinkle, who later provided the story for Oscar-winning Vietnam epic "The Deer Hunter," Ugo Liberatore of "The Tramplers," and Albert Band of "The Hellbenders" have written an exciting western about an outlaw, Clay McCord (Alex Cord), on the dodge. Bounty hunters flock after McCord and his partner Fred Duskin (Giampiero Albertini of "Commandos") and beat them at a mission. McCord knows Father Santana who runs the mission, and he is bringing him a bottle of whiskey. Two bounty hunters, Jesús María (Aldo Sambrell of "Navajo Joe") and Sein (Antonio Molino Rojo of "A Bullet for Sandoval"), kill the monk in cold blood. These bounty hunters are so bad that they remove the body from the head and stuff it into a bag rather than drag an entire corpse around with them. The bounty hunters try to ambush them. Sein masquerades as a priest, but Clay is too quick for them. He guns down Sein, and Fred takes care of Jesús. The fly in the ointment is that Clay suffers from tremors of the right arm, like the John Wayne character Cole Thornton did in Howard Hawks' "El Dorado." Clay takes refuge in the border town of Escondido. Incidentally, Escondido is run an imposed hombre named Krant (Mario Brega of "A Fistful of Dollars"), and he is no friend to McCord. The scene where Clay is walking with a bottle in his hand that casts the reflection of a desperado posed to shot him in the back with a rifle is neat. The story is peppered with flashbacks, and we learn how Clay turned into a swift-shooting, crack-shot of a gunslinger. Clay's poor ailing father is ridiculed and dragged unceremoniously through the streets while suffering a seizure. Clay snatches a six-gun and blasts away at the bastards.

This Spaghetti Western uses three American lead actors which takes away a little of the typical spaghetti aura. The plot is about an amnesty that the governor of New Mexico gives to all willing criminals to provide them a chance to start a new life. Usually this kind of opportunity is limited to past events but in this film it seems more like a licence to kill because even new crimes (like e.g. threatening the governor) are forgiven. The story is an endless chain of killings where nearly every character has only the purpose to deliver more carcasses. Only the few leads have stamina. Clay McCord is haunted by nightmares related to a childhood event where unsurprisingly he killed a lot of people. In the middle of the everlasting mayhem this kind of reflections lack credibility. Compared with similar films like e.g. BANDIDOS none of the characters in this film was likable for me.Apart of the weak content which targets certain customers this film is well shot, sets are somewhat detailed and the acting is average. 4 / 10.

Carcasses galore do not a better movie make. Some guy with an unnamed palsey like affliction in his hand goes around blowing people away by the dozen. For an example he rides into a camp, shoots about fifteen people and next is seen riding off on their wagon. He must have needed a wagon. We get a flashback scene wherein the principal is seen as a boy of around nine kneeling over his father in the street while his dad is having an attack of the obviously genetic palsey. Ten or so men stand around and laugh at the boy's father in derision. The kid gets mad and grabs a gun and shoots them all dead. We are supposed to presume the kid goes on with the business of growing up without answering any repercussions from having committed this mass murder in the middle of town. Uhh...ok. Right. That could happen.This movie plays like a Sergio Leone copy done by an elementary school drama club. When in doubt, shoot some characters.The most unrealistic aspect of this film is that there is no way the main character would have been able to travel around on horseback carrying that amount of lead ammunition required to kill as many as he does. Hey, maybe thats why he needed the wagon.