The Professionals

The Professionals is a Western from 1966, written and directed by Richard Brooks. It received a few high-profile Oscar nominations, two for Brooks (screenplay and direction) and a cinematography nod for the great Conrad Hall, but it seems to have slipped between the cracks, as I had hardly heard of it until it was released on DVD. Turns out to be a first-rate action yarn, with a fantastic script and a fine cast.

What strikes one immediately is how economical it is. The four main characters are introduced during the opening credits in short sequences that immediately establish character. The set-up of the plot is established before the ten-minute mark: a wealthy man, Ralph Bellamy, hires a team to go into Mexico to retrieve his wife, kidnapped by a guerrilla. The four-member team are played by Lee Marvin, Burt Lancaster, Woody Strode and Robert Ryan, who ooze testosterone.

The setting is a later Old West, well after the introduction of the automobile, sometime around World War I. Marvin's character had run with Pancho Villa. This is the same time of the dying West of The Wild Bunch, which came a few years later, and has perhaps outshone The Professionals as an example of a sixties film that deal with this topic.

Of course, once the men reach their target, who is played with va-va-voom intensity by Claudia Cardinale, they discover the job wasn't exactly what they thought it would be. There is all sorts of musings on the nature of duty, honor and courage, and what it means to be, well, a professional.

Marvin and Lancaster are particularly solid, with the former as a no-nonsense tactician, a foreshadowing of the leader he would play in The Dirty Dozen. After watching this film I would have followed this character anywhere. Lancaster is his amigo and partner, who is more free-spirited and amoral, who says his epitaph should concern "100 proof women, 90 proof whiskey, and 14 karat gold." Ryan is the horse expert, a little of out his league for this job, but the conscience of the group, while Strode is the strong and silent type who is an expert marksman.

Almost everything about this picture works. The depiction of Mexicans in this film is very even-handed, even if notably non-Latin Jack Palance plays the guerrilla leader. The backdrop of the Mexican revolution is handled with historical care. Nothing any of the characters do or say is out of left field, and wow are there some great lines. A sampling: Lancaster is told to go to Hell, and he replies, "Yes ma'am, I'm on my way," or the great last line, when someone calls Marvin a bastard and he replies, "Yes sir, with me an accident of birth. But you sir are a self-made man."

Anyone who enjoys a rousing Western or just the simple pleasure of watching a well-written, well-crafted film would do well to catch The Professionals.