I found this 1968 spaghetti western from action legend Sergio Corbucci pretty entertaining, if in a relentlessly hyperbolic, showboating way. It’s an amusing mix of the buffoonish, the witty, the visually spectacular and the stirring. A group of Mexican miners revolts against their decadent overlords; their leader (Tomas Milian) enlists the help of a blond-haired mercenary (Franco Nero) known as, so help me, “The Polack,” to help turn them into a revolutionary army. Meanwhile, government forces collaborate with ultra-bad sadist Curly (Jack Palance, smoking reefers and wearing a hilarious wig) to squelch the rebellion.

All that said, it’s mainly a buddy film, and the main focus of the movie is on the relationship between the Milian character and the Nero one: the clueless but shrewd dark brute vs. the suave blue-eyed cynic — they bicker, they bond, they feud, they stab each other in the back …

The plot delivers a few well-engineered twists, but its main purpose is to serve as an excuse for picturesque, macho overacting; brilliantly staged action; awe-inspiring scenery and glorious horses; and a lot of over-the-top Ennio Morricone music. Like all the good spaghetti westerns, it’s so off in its own cartoonish, make-believe world that it might as well be a sci-fi movie.

Here’s a review of the film from 10K Bullets. Like “Django,” another Corbucci-directed spaghetti western, “The Mercenary” has had its influence on Quentin Tarantino.