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If you wanted to work in film busi­ness in Italy dur­ing the 1960’s, it was inevitable that you would be involved in the mak­ing of at least one spaghetti west­ern.  The demand for the genre and the export-friendly nature of these titles ensured that Italian pro­duc­ers would gladly lay down the lira nec­es­sary to crank them out with fre­quency.  Thus, a whole gen­er­a­tion of commercial-minded Italian film­mak­ers ended up try­ing their hand at the genre, includ­ing ones that you nor­mally asso­ciate with other genres.

Case in point: Dario Argento.  The future Italo-horror wiz­ard con­tributed to the writ­ing of a few spaghetti west­ern scripts, the best known being Once Upon A Time In The West.  Another exam­ple is Today We Kill, Tomorrow We Die!, which is more of a straight­for­ward sage­brush pro­gram­mer.  It deals in famil­iar arche­types but does so in a way with a cer­tain clev­er­ness of touch that sug­gests the inven­tion  Argento would soon bring to the giallo film.

The basic plot is as com­fort­able as an old pair of cow­boy boots: it begins with Bill Kiowa (Brett Halsey) emerg­ing from a long jail stint for an unmen­tioned crime he didn’t com­mit.  He’s got vengeance on his mind and begins round­ing up a col­or­ful gallery of mer­ce­nary rogues to aid him in his quest for vengeance, includ­ing such spaghetti west­ern stal­warts as William Berger and Bud Spencer.  Kiowa’s tar­get is the nefar­i­ous crime boss Elfego (Tatsuya Nakadai), a treach­er­ously smart sociopath who is as skilled with a machete as he is with a gun.

It doesn’t take much expe­ri­ence with the genre to pre­dict what fol­lows next: there’s an unex­pected inter­rup­tion to the vengeance plan, an extended flash­back that explains Kiowa’s thirst for vengeance and an extended finale that cul­mi­nates in a mano-a-mano quick-draw stand­off.  That said, any­one who enjoys spaghetti west­erns won’t mind because Today We Kill, Tomorrow We Die! goes through its paces with style, wit and a sub­tly deployed sense of invention.

Throughout the film’s run­ning time, Argento and co-writer/director Tonino Cervi keep the viewer hooked by find­ing fresh slants of the famil­iar genre ele­ments.  Great exam­ples include the open­ing, in which Kiowa seems to pull a gun on a guard from his jail cell, only for it to be revealed as a self-carved wooden decoy he uses for draw­ing prac­tice, and a witty scene where Kiowa forces would-be assas­sins to wait out­side a gen­eral store while he takes his time select­ing a new pis­tol to use in their stand­off.  Touches like these bring a play­ful, self-referential sense of humor to the pro­ceed­ings that bright­ens up the famil­iar plot vari­ables.  Without get­ting into specifics, it’s also worth not­ing that the extended finale incor­po­rates a unique set­ting and some unortho­dox styles of action beyond gun­fight­ing into its repertoire.

Finally, it helps that Cervi’s direc­tion is rock-solid: he keeps the action flow­ing from start to fin­ish, deploys the dif­fer­ent plot ele­ments with style and gives it an appro­pri­ately stark yet styl­ish look.  Today We Kill, Tomorrow We Die! also ben­e­fits from strong per­for­mances across the board:  Halsey is con­vinc­ing as a grimly stoic hero in the Django/Man With No Name vein while Bud Spencer adds a nice touch of dead­pan slap­stick humor play­ing a typ­i­cally brawl-happy char­ac­ter.  Nakadai makes an unset­tlingly intense vil­lain, infus­ing his scenes with a kind of furi­ous aggres­sion that makes a dis­tinct impression.

In short, Today We Kill, Tomorrow We Die! is the kind of spaghetti west­ern that is tai­lor made for the genre enthu­si­asts.  It may not rein­vent the genre but it han­dles the famil­iar tropes with enough inven­tion that fans won’t care.