Keoma.

What's the risk? What's the reward? What's at stake? Ok.

What's the risk? Personal death. The father's death. The girl's death. The best-friend-ever-had/mentor-growing-up's death. Deep shame, embarrassment, disappointment, etc, especially in relation to finding out that one is not the fastest gunslinger in the west.

What's the reward? Affirmation from the community, as well the gunslinging sub-culture (VERY important). The prosperity and longevity of the townspeople. Pissing the brothers off (semi-VERY important).

What's at stake? Possible future corrupt wrong-doing from evil-doer. The sanctity of the town. Personal honor (VERY important, that's what I'm saying, personal honor is very important to Keoma).

A trend I notice among certain dramas, and maybe most of all certain genre films, is that sometimes a heightened or exaggerated sense of risk is used to bolster the dramatic value of the film. It may be the key to drama, in fact, and I think in scriptwriting they teach you to establish this right off. In a contemporary drama what's at risk is usually the protagonist's high school reputation or the solidarity of a family following a close death or the endurance of a friendship through and after a long road trip, etc.

In a genre film it'll almost always be personal freedom or existence. In a crime film it's either/or, in a horror film it's existence (or deterioration of existence, e.g. sanity), and in a western it's usually existence (though sometimes personal freedom). Genre films are high-stake adventures, and certainly Spaghetti Westerns are all-in. Why exactly Keoma risks so much over the course of his film I'm not sure, but that he does risk everything I'm certain of.

The woman, the film has a central female character, is a pregnant cast-out who has been accused of plague infection. There's no romance involved. Keoma knows of her existence because he is the father of her child (50/50) or because she lives in proximity to his father (also 50/50). He doesn't need a definite reason for saving her, anyway, and she ostensibly leads him into the town where the rest of the film will take place.

The film will slowly reveal internal and external motivations for Keoma initiating his immensely brave campaign against the injustices brought upon the town, and the reveals will come through a combination of flash-backs and character development. The flash-backs aren't so bad. A few of them have to do with the massacring of a certain Indian community. The incremental story structure, set amidst the chaos, destruction and general havoc Keoma wreaks and has wreaked upon him, keeps the film hard-edged and action oriented without sacrificing pacing. Sometimes a Western will feel compartmentalized with the bulk of the story at the beginning and all the action at the end. Not here.

What's cool in westerns is that everyone has a gun and most scenes have gun elements and all this savagery and lawlessness allows a deeper meaning to develop from the action scenes. That's why guys love 'em, because guys love guns and action and they love love equally.

Because of the way the film is set up it feels like Keoma's disposition compels him to shoot any asshole and/or moral offender. This makes the film exciting, but it doesn't allow Keoma to earn this privilege. His actions often come off as self-entitled and usually it's the bad guys who act in a sense of self-entitlement. Unless it's an anti-hero, right? Unless the good guy is as morally corrupted as the bad guy.

It's worth mentioning these two bits of information:

1. "The storyline of the film was mostly improvised same time the film was made. First version of the script was written by Luigi Montefiori (aka George Eastman), but director Enzo G. Castellari didn't like the story. Because of problems with schedule, they written script for next day every evening after filming of the day."

It's probably through an adherence to an overall structure that the film retains its cohesiveness despite the continual script changes, but how the film does this without feeling loose-ended is beyond me. Castellari is talented would be my explanation. It's not that there aren't loose-ends, it's just that the loose-ends feel more ambiguous and open-ended than incomplete or neglected.

2. What fits with where I was headed: Castellari lists Bergman, Peckinpah, Altman (McCabe & Mrs. Miller in particular), etc reputable and not at all genre-exclusive filmmakers among his influences for Keoma.

You hear that a lot in genre circles, sophisticated and high-minded films influencing genre films (Last House on the Left being a remake of The Virgin Spring comes immediately to mind), but you don't often find genre films that truly mesh the qualities and ideologies of the two.

Keoma sort of succeeds in doing that. I'm leaving out a lot here, a lot of absurdity and a lot of ridiculous Spaghetti Western peculiarities, but overall I really think Keoma is a strong western that makes real attempts at earning its stripes.