A Bullet For The General (Quien Sabe?)

A Bullet for the General (It. El Chuncho, quién sabe?), is a 1967 film which starred Gian Maria Volonte, Klaus Kinski, Lou Castel and Martine Beswick. Originally entitled El Chuncho, quién sabe?, it is the story of El Chuncho, the bandit, and Bill Tate (or El Gringo) who is a counter-revolutionary in Mexico. Chuncho soon learns that social revolution is more important than mere money. This is one of the more famous Zapata Westerns, a subgenre of the spaghetti western which deals with the radicalizing of bad men and bandits into revolutionaries when they are confronted with injustice. Others in this subgenre include Companeros, The Mercenary and perhaps most famously A Fistful of Dynamite (also known as Duck, You Sucker).

Probably the most political Spaghetti Western film I've seen but it's a great film. Those of you who haven't checked it out should be ashamed!

In the mail right now!

Yeah it's a good film, more along the lines of The Great Silence than Companeros or Django.

It's also written by Franco Solinas who wrote Battle of the Algiers (In the same year no less).

Getting ready to start this sucker!

Cool. Hope you like it as much as I did.

So for about 100 minutes, A Bullet for the General felt slightly above average... and then it hit that point. Holy crap. What a great little film. The politics were interesting. The plot was full of surprises (interesting, genuine ones), and the performances were wonderful (especially despite the mediocre dubbing, etc. that is not really out of place in pasta westerns)

As far as westerns that Sergio Leone did not direct, this is one of the best I have seen. Gian Maria Volante really delivers. Even Kinski is interesting, if underused.

I agree with pretty much all of that. Supposidly there were two English dubs for the film and the superior one wasn't the one chosen by Anchor Bay... which is odd. My only complaint about the actual film itself is that I would have prefered Franco Nero, Lee Van Cleef or Musante as the American. I don't think Lou Castell held his own against Volonte.

If you liked this one Faccia A Faccia (Volonte again), The Big Gundown and The Mercenary are well worth a watch. I think the political spaghetti westerns are often the best.

The director Damiano Damiani argues to this day that this film is not a western but a political film due the film taking place after when most westerns would and not actually setting foot in the west.

Just realised Franco 'Battle of the Algiers' Solinas wrote both this an The Mercenary which probably explains the similarities.