THE PROFESSIONALS, Columbia, 1966.
Dir. Richard Brooks, Perf. Burt Lancaster, Lee Marvin, Robert Ryan, Jack Palance, Woody Strode, Ralph Bellamy, and Claudia Cardinale.
Review by Dominic
In The Professionals, wealthy rancher J.W. Grant (Bellamy) seeks out four adventurous gents, experts in their respective fields, to rescue his young wife, Maria (Cardinale in her Hollywood debut). In an apparent flight of nostalgia, the Mexican-born Maria has gone riding across the border, only to be taken to the stronghold of revolutionary-turned-bandit Jesus Raza (Palance) and held for ransom. To the rescue comes Marvin, a top military mind; Lancaster as a womanizing scallywag and explosives expert; Strode as a scout and archer; and a horse-wrangling Ryan. At a rate of ten thousand per man for just nine days work, this white knight gig seems like good money in anyone’s language. That is, if all is as it seems. Which it isn’t.
Neither The Magnificent Seven (1960) nor The Wild Bunch (1969), but residing somewhat blandly between the two, The Professionals still has merit enough of its own to maintain a foothold in Western film history. For one, Brooks arranges his performers with obvious care: camera positioning, lighting and blocking choices are worked out to a tee, evoking the most from even straightforward conversations. As the mercenaries discuss their mission, the haunting use of natural sound—wind, odd jangles and creaks—heightens the tension in a way that prefigures the opening scene of Leone’s Once Upon a Time in the West (1968).
Brooks’s strong sense of composition also means he knows exactly when to strip back the dialogue, turn down the score, and let the action do the talking. In one spectacular scene a train hurtles across a valley flanked by men on horseback while the smoke streaming from its chimney is visually matched by the uproar of dust from the galloping animals.
Nevertheless, there is a lot missing from The Professionals. Despite the film’s surprisingly high body-count, dealing death is treated with neither the moral ambivalence of The Magnificent Seven, nor the disorientation and trauma of The Wild Bunch. Additionally, and while they are three gunslingers fewer, the professionals are less developed characters than their magnificent counterparts—Ryan, in particular, an almost total non-entity.
Marvin’s intriguing portrayal of strategist “Rico,” however, stands out from the pack and gives The Professionals much of its staying-power. His hardboiled grumbling from beneath a low-brimmed hat holds our attention by betraying less than we want to know, and lends a sense of brooding drama and emotional backstory to the film’s proceedings.
