The Big Gundown — The Big Gundown( Blu Ray)

Sergio Sollima’s spaghetti western is one of a trio of genre-defining classics released in 1966 alongside Sergio Leone’s The Good, The Bad and The Ugly and Sergio Corbucci’s Django. The Big Gundown is probably the least well-known of the three, but that doesn’t stop it from being a much-loved classic with fans of the genre. 

Growing up in the 1970s and 80s in the same household as my Dad the western was a surefire winner. John Wayne, Clint Eastwood, John Ford, Sergio Leone, Franco Nero and Lee Van Cleef were names that became so familiar to the preteen version of me, that I would automatically check out movies associated with those names.  Over 40 years later, and many of those films still resonate with me, and while The Big Gundown was a movie I didn’t discover until several years later, it is certainly something my Dad would have watched. In fact, I had the pleasure of introducing him to this movie sometime in the 1990s or 2000s.

The Big Gundown stars western legend Lee Van Cleef ( The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, For A Few Dollars More and Escape from New York) as bounty hunter Jonathan ‘Colorado’ Corbett who is employed to track down and bring to justice, Mexican peasant, Manuel ‘Cuchillo’ Sanchez (Tomas Milian, Squadra Antigangsters, The Cynic, The Rat and The Fist, and Don’t Torture a Duckling) who has been accused of the rape and murder of a 12-year-old girl. Corbett, who has recently risen to the role of a senator is employed to track down Sanchez, a task he relishes with great delight. As he tracks Cuchillo, he gets to know a little more about the man and begins to wonder just how true the accusations really are.

The Big Gundown is an underrated classic of the genre, every bit as good as Sergio Leone’s renowned epics and Corbucci’s Django with a score that remains one of Ennio Morricone’s finest. The performances by Van Cleef and Milian in particular are top-notch, while the rest of the cast put in very solid performances. The beautiful cinematography by Carlo Carlini (The Pyjama Girl Case, Seven Deaths in the Cat’s Eye and The Bloodstained Butterfly) is really brought to life in this superb new Blu-ray release from Powerhouse Films that features a stunning new 2k restoration of the movie. Not only do we get the full 111-minute Italian theatrical release, but we get both the extended US cut (95 minutes) and the US theatrical release too (89 minutes). As well as the three versions of the movie, we get a boatload of outstanding extras including an audio commentary with Barry Forshaw and Kim Newman, a bunch of featurettes featuring interviews with director Sergio Sollima and Tomas Milian, and a couple of videos of Stephen Thrower unravelling the film’s themes and politics as well as Sollima’s career.

Overall this is an outstanding set, for one of the finest spaghetti westerns ever made. This 2-disc Blu-ray set is limited to 5,000 copies and comes with a poster and an 80-page booklet. If you’re a fan of westerns in general, or spaghetti westerns in particular then this is a must-buy. In fact, I would recommend this release to anyone who loves high-quality cinema.