| |
...All The Way Boys!
|
|
| Year: |
1972
|
|
Director: |
Giuseppe Colizzi
|
| Stars: |
Terence Hill, Bud Spencer, Reinhard Kolldehoff, Carlos Muñoz, Riccardo Pizzuti, Marcello Verziera, Sergio Bruzzichini, Cyril Cusack, Alexander Allerson, Ferdinando Murolo, Michel Antoine, Antoine Saint-John
|
| Genre: |
Comedy, Action, Adventure |
| Rating: |
  6 (from 2 votes) |
| Review: |
Pilots Plata (Terence Hill) and Salud (Bud Spencer) have a good thing going with their latest moneymaking scheme: crashing planes. Not crashing them anywhere, but on or near the runways of South America, where they can radio the control tower that they are in difficulty when they are not - so they have witnesses - and then proceed to land the craft as noisily and messily as possible. Once the old plane is a write-off, the insurance can be collected and Plata and Salud can get their share. It must be a foolproof plan...
But like most foolproof plans in the movies, there has to be a flaw eventually, as our two heroes find out the second time we see them try the scam which has worked out for them for so long. Mind you, even then there are problems getting their money when the cheques of Naso (Riccardo Pizzuti), who they are in league with when they smash up those ramshackle aircraft, have a tendency to bounce. This should be the cue for a tense thriller, really, but with these two stars heading the adventure what you actually were presented with was an easygoing saunter through some devices which had already done the duo proud.
This was released two years after the first of the megahit pairings of Hill and Spencer, They Call Me Trinity, which had been such a success that a sequel was swiftly ordered. That too rang the box office tills, and a comic partnership was formed; they didn't make every subsequent one of their movies together, as they proved just as welcome solo in their individual vehicles as they did together, but whenever they were on their own from 1970 onwards it was difficult to see one and not wonder where the other was. Thus here, in a modern day comedy rather than a Western, it was clear they were following a formula.
Which was, friendly slapstick humour and not quite so friendly, but still meant to be funny, fight scenes, of which ...All The Way Boys! (a line spoken in the film by a parrot - while watching fisticuffs, naturally) had an abundance. That old tenet in the movies of giving the public what they wanted rather than offering them something they didn't know they wanted was well to the fore here, and if you liked Terence and Bud elsewhere chances were strong that you'd like them in this as well. In truth, the plot gave meandering a bad name, as the stars got into various scrapes which they either charmed or biffed their way out of, but that was part of the appeal to the fans.
Their personalities even stretched to their combat styles, with Hill taking the good old fashioned "sock 'em on the jaw" route which did his characters proud, and doing his characters yet prouder was Spencer's distinctive wallop, often open-handed, which only the hardiest of souls could withstand. This was the sort of movie where drinking yourself into a kind of peaceful state of mind was the only correct way to negotiate a flight into a storm while carrying a sick passenger, a course of action which does not, as might well happen in real life, end, shall we say, rather badly for all concerned. But while Plata and Salud cannot even see eye to eye among themselves as to how altruistic they should be among the community they find, miners for gemstones who are under the thumb of a deaf local gangster, we do know they will have done the right thing by the end credits. Giving fresh meaning to casual in their approach, this was nothing groundbreaking, nor did it intend to be. Music by Guido and Maurizio De Angelis.
Aka: Più forte, ragazzi!
|
| Reviewer: |
Graeme Clark
|
| |
|
|
