The Five Man Army

The Five Man Army
The Five Man Army film poster Film poster
Directed by	Don Taylor Italo Zingarelli
Produced by	Italo Zingarelli
Written by	Marc Richards Dario Argento
Starring	Peter Graves Bud Spencer
Music by	Ennio Morricone
Cinematography	Enzo Barboni
Edited by	Sergio Montanari
Production company	Tiger Film
Distributed by	Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (1969, original) Warner Bros. (2012, DVD)
Release dates	October 16, 1969 (1969-10-16)
Running time	105 minutes
Country	Italy
Language	Italian

The Five Man Army (Italian: Un esercito di cinque uominicode: it is deprecated , 1969) is an Italian Zapata spaghetti western film taking place during the Mexican Revolution.

The film was directed by Don Taylor and featured a script by a young Dario Argento. Starring as a group of five men enlisted to rob a train containing a shipment of gold were Peter Graves, James Daly, Bud Spencer, Nino Castelnuovo and Tetsuro Tamba. The film's score was composed by Ennio Morricone.

Plot

The rebels want the "Dutchman" (Peter Graves) to rob a train carrying $500,000 in gold on behalf of Victoriano Huerta to finance the Mexican Revolution. So the Dutchman enlists four other men, a strong man (Bud Spencer), an acrobat (Nino Castelnuovo), an explosives specialist (James Daly) and a samurai (Tetsuro Tamba), promising to reward each one a thousand dollars. Their first undertaking is to save the rebel leader from being executed.

After thwarting the execution and having caused a riot in the village, the five men are forced to flee, along with all the civilians, in order to prevent reprisals. Nevertheless, some soldiers still manage to find them and bring them to the local Mexican Army commandant. They manage to escape, killing the soldiers and dynamiting the fort's magazine. A squad of soldiers manage to pick up their trail. All seems lost when suddenly, in a gorge, dozens of revolutionaries cover the escape of the five men. The few revolutionaries are vastly outnumbered, but this serves to make the five men understand how important the success of their business. The train is heavily defended by a cannon, machine guns, and dozens of soldiers. The difficult robbery succeeds. However, the other men never believed that the Dutchman would really give the gold to the revolutionaries, but would divide it evenly between them. The Dutchman wants to respect the agreement, though, having his personal reasons.

In the final showdown, the Five Man Army kills all soldiers, and the Mexicans arrive to celebrate the men as heroes.

DVD

The Five Man Army was released to DVD by Warner Home Video on September 11th, 2012 via the Warner Archive DVD-on-demand system available through Amazon.

See also

• Adima Changala, a 1981 Indian remake

External links

• The Five Man Army at IMDb