A Reason To Live, A Reason To Die

A Reason to Live, a Reason to Die

Genre: Spaghetti Western

Original title: Una ragione per vivere e una per morire

Director: Tonino Valerii

Year: 1972

Branded a coward for surrendering his New Mexico fort to the Confederates without firing a shot, a Union colonel attempts to redeem himself by leading a band of condemned prisoners on a suicide mission to recapture it.

A Reason To Live, A reason To Die is a wonderful War-Western which is sadly overlooked by most. The story is completely lifted from the Dirty Dozen but thats alright with me, men on a mission films are my kind of movies! 

James Coburn is great as always & Bud Spencer plays a right deviant git who talks himself out of almost every situation & then there's Telly Savalas as the confederate major. There's humour thrown in (mostly via Bud Spencer) but there's always a sense of doom that looms over the characters, it's never played for cheap laughs. 

Reading up about this picture it seems I love it way more than most people. Though I do wonder if the people who weren't keen had seen the much shorter version where Coburn is dubbed by another actor. The version I saw ran at nearly two hours & I can't imagine a single second of it being removed. In my view, an underrated gem.

Rating: ★★★★

The Dirty Dozen go West