WillSushyMedia
This movie was so-so. It had it's moments, but wasn't the greatest.
Murphy Howard
I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.
Brooklynn
There's a more than satisfactory amount of boom-boom in the movie's trim running time.
adrianswingler
I watched this wondering about Keoma Rises and am a fan of the director's work. I love any Spaghetti Western that is better than mediocre. So, bottom line, it was a disappointment to watch one that I basically just didn't like.I think we all agree the soundtrack is awful. But the awful songs can be muted while they're wailing away (I don't know one can really call it singing). But the big problem for me was that it was obvious that the director had been told it was the last SW the studio was doing and he's WAY too conscious of that fact. Also, we watch SWs for what they are, not for how they inspired other genres, creating some kind of weird cinematic echo chamber. Elements of Peckinpaugh and Hong Kong action flicks- but not integrated in any way. Just kind of, "Let's do some of that..."If you notice the firearms and the year it'll drive you nuts. Obviously supposed to be circa 1870, mostly it's what you'd expect to see immediately after the Civil War. But it's like they ran out of period arms and just grabbed whatever else was around for some scenes. Lots of 1873 Winchester rifles and I thought even saw the odd 1890's model. Ditto the Colt Peacemaker, alongside your standard issue Civil War Colt. I suppose it could be 1874, but were those arms instantly available everywhere??? Given the rest, one thinks they weren't too concerned about it.Bottom line for me, it was a seriously misguided attempt that is waaaay too conscious of its being what it is, the swan song of the classic pasta western.
Woodyanders
Half-breed Keoma (the almighty Franco Nero in peak rugged and soulful form) is tired of eking out a living by killing people. So he decides to return to his childhood home. However, Keoma soon finds himself caught up in a fierce dispute between innocent settlers, a band of sadistic bandits, and his own hateful and vengeful half-brothers. Director Enzo G. Castellari, who also co-wrote the compact and complex script with George Eastman, Nico Ducci, and Mino Roli, relates the engrossing philosophical story at a hypnotic gradual pace, does a masterful job of crafting a potently gloomy mood rife with despair and desolation, maintains a dark grim tone throughout, stages the exciting shoot-outs with consummate skill and incendiary flair to spare (the striking use of strenuous slow motion in particular seriously smokes), presents a stark and startling portrait of a brutal lawless town, and tops everything off with a wonderfully peculiar existential sensibility that offers a provocative examination on the themes of life, death, and fate. The excellent acting by the top-rate cast keeps the movie on track: William Berger as Keoma's wise and tolerant father William Shannon, Olga Karlatos as sweet and caring pregnant lady Lisa, Donald O'Brien as the ruthless Caldwell, Gabriella Giacobbe as a sinister prophet of doom, and Orso Maria Guerrini, Antonio Marsini, and Joshua Sinclair as Keoma's resentful siblings. The always welcome Woody Strode has a nice role as Keoma's faithful old buddy George. Aiace Parolin's picturesque cinematography provides an appropriately dusty'n'dingy look. The quirky and operatic, but still harmonic score by Guido and Mairizio De Angelis for the most part works, although the overwrought warbling by the female singer is a bit much at times. Punctuated with jolting outbursts of savage violence and further enhanced by a singularly brooding sober atmosphere as well as a poignant "you can't go home" central message, this one rates highly as one of the most unusual and distinctive Italian Westerns made in the 70's.
mgtbltp
Films like great paintings, are there for us to view, experience, and interpret. This go round, watching I think it finally all clicked. This is my interpretation. A truly Mythic Western, an amalgamation of American Western Legend and Myth, Greco-Roman Mythology, and a touch of Catholic theology. Darkness, we enter the Dreamscape from darkness, the roar of time floods your ears and you see a sliver of a crack in the continuum of the universe. Through it we see a horseman punctuated with now the sounds and sights other human artifacts, we cut to frantic hands combing through the debris of humanity. The rider is in a Dream/Ghost town or perhaps Limbus. The hands belong to a Witch/Medicine Woman/Fate and she clutches discarded treasures that she loads on her barrow. She spots the rider and hides. As he passes she calls out a question "Why did you come back? Why did you come back?" So begins KeomaThe De Angelis brothers' weird soundtrack, especially the female voice now suggests an eerie Native American chant and whole film has a dreamworld atmosphere constantly enhanced by the incredible cinematography reinforcing the tone of this last of the great operatic Spaghetti Westerns. A good companion piece to Jodorowsky's El Topo.
Peter-174
Castellari made a couple of decent movies, a few really good ones and quite a bit of god awful ones. This is his best. Saw the movie for the first time when I was about 14 on VHS in the 80's and though I thought it was very weird, I liked it. A few years later I saw it again, when I was around 21 and liked it a bit more. Showed it to some other people I knew and saw it again. Then, DVD came. I'm from Europe, but I ordered it from the States. I loved it. Now I saw it recently for the first time on the big screen. I have forgiven it some of the voice-actors and accepted the odd soundtrack. Hell, I even like it at parts. Now I finally see the truth. Keoma is a masterpiece.
