4 Dollars of Revenge review

4 Dollars of Revenge AKA 4 Dollars of Vengeance (1966)

Dir. Jaime Jesús Balcázar

Starring: Robert Woods, Diana Ghia,

While escorting a fortune in confederate gold, Capt. Roy Dexter and his men are attacking in an ambused and only he is left alive. After being framed for the attack, he escapes prison and begins to seek justice from the people that set him up.

Robert Woods stars in this film as the hero Roy Dexter. He's such a great guy, that his dreams of leaving the calvary, entering politics, and marrying his special lady Mercedes. But that all gets stripped away when his escort mission goes awry. And it everything that follows is pretty much what you expect to happen. Which isn't bad. Robert Woods carries the movie well, coming across like a hero in the Charlton Heston mold. He wanders through the film intercepting the people who framed him, and learning of the conspiracy to frame him, and it's exactly who you think it is.

This is a perfectly fine film. It is looks good, it tells a story in a competent way, and all the actors do a decent job in their roles. There's nothing about the movie this is going to amaze anyone. But that's fine. It's a good example of the early spaghetti western days. There's some decent action scenes, and then the movie ends with a climatic sword fight, which is really cool because it was unexpected. All things considered it isn't the best onscreen sword fight, but for this type of film it was a pleasant surprise, and a nice change from climatic duels that westerns usually have as their finales. 

It's kind of amazing that writer Bruno Corbucci wrote this and Django, both came out the same year, and one went on to be hugely sucessful and influential and the other one is basically forgotten*. It's predictable but fun, and I wasn't bored, and not necessarily a bad movie, and it has some good moments, but it really isn't that great. Some of the action scenes are good and it is pretty interesting that the movie ends with a sword fight, which is something that you don't usually see in westerns**. But really 4 Dollars of Revenge isn't something I would recommend to someone that wasn't trying to see every spaghetti western.

*This movie doesn't even have a Wikipedia page. Even the awful Revenge of the Virgins has it's own Wiki page.

**Excluding stuff like the Zorro films.