Sergio Sollima is considered the most political of the makers of Italian Westerns. I’ve seen two of his crime flicks – THE FAMILY (a.k.a. VIOLENT CITY), starring Charles Bronson and Telly Savalas and REVOLVER, starring Oliver Reed – and both are incredible, but his Westerns are on another level. First was THE BIG GUNDOWN. Following that was 1967’s FACE TO FACE, which I haven’t yet seen. Like those two films, RUN, MAN, RUN stars the dearly departed Tomas Milian, who was once a big international star, but who you’d now bestrecognize from a small role in Steven Soderbergh’s 2000 film TRAFFIC, if at all. But Milian was a livewire presence in a ton of “Spaghetti” Westerns, and while THE BIG GUNDOWN had him sharing the stage with “The Bad,” Lee Van Cleef, RUN, MAN, RUN gives Milian the spotlight.
The Cuban-born Milian plays a Mexican native and wanderer, the same character he played in THE BIG GUNDOWN, who lands himself back in jail and gets word of hidden treasure. His job is to track down that gold, while eluding pursuers with various motivations, including an American gunfighter – the Clint Eastwood role, played here by eventual “Spaghetti” Western journeyman actor Donal O’Brien, a French-born Irishman. My favorite of all of the adversaries here is the woman who is just trying to get her man to stop running and settle down, played by the incredible Chelo Alonso, well-matched to the fiery Milian. Chelo Alonso was, like Milian, born in Cuba, and she had a short-lived but powerful reign as an international sex symbol, appearing with costars like Steve Reeves and Anita Ekberg as a “peplum princess,” which is a term I only just learned today! You may recognize her from a tiny part in THE GOOD, THE BAD & THE UGLY, but probably only if you’ve seen it as many times as I have.
RUN, MAN, RUN is kind of a picaresque, or a man-on-the-run movie, and Milian’s character Cuchillo does a lot of running, even more than he did in THE BIG GUNDOWN, where he was running from Lee Van Cleef, for God’s sake. His equivalent in this kind of role could easily be Eli Wallach as Tuco, but I’m thinking nobody would ever refer to Tomas Milian as “The Ugly.” Cuchillo is a larger-than-life Bugs Bunny kind of character – if Bugs was absolutely deadly with throwing knives. The name “Cuchillo” alone sounds more than a little naughty to gringo ears, and I think it’s of a piece with the movie’s anarchic spirit. (Yes, I know what it means, but still.)
You could put Sollima’s compositions up against almost anything Corbucci and even Leone did, so this is as pleasing visually as the best of the “Spaghetti” genre, but RUN, MAN, RUN is firstly very, very funny, and from Milian’s performance on down, it’s an energetic blast of chaos. I still recommend starting with THE BIG GUNDOWN, but RUN, MAN, RUN is the first I saw of Sollima’s Westerns – thanks to the amazing DVD label Blue Underground – and it will definitely make you want to search out more. This is the rare case where streaming will save you: RUN, MAN, RUN appears to be out of print at BU, and Netflix isn’t sending out hard copies anymore, so… Get on that internet. Tell ’em Cuchillo sent you. And check out the trailer – that’s Tomas Milian himself caterwauling over the hellaciously catchy theme song (by Morricone and his colleague Bruno Nicolai, naturally.)
At the moment, you can watch RUN, MAN, RUN on the streaming service Tubi.
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Tags: Bruno Nicolai, Chelo Alonso, Donal O'Brien, Ennio Morricone, Guglielmo Mancori, Guns, Italy, John Ireland, Knives, Linda Veras, Pompeo De Angelis, Sergio Sollima, Tatiana Casini Morigi, The 1960s, tomas milian, violence, Westerns
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