I'm a huge Lee Van Cleef fan and he is awesome as always in this one. This film has a decent story line which is very easy to follow (unlike plenty of other Westerns). There's a few good plot twists along the way and also has a little comedy in some parts, which I found myself chuckling at so hats off the people who made this film. It doesn't have the real seriousness that the Man With No Name trilogy and many other Westerns have, but some times you just want to watch a Western that's a little bit more laid back. A real fun watch with plenty of action and I found the ending to be really nice. The copy I watched didn't have the greatest picture quality but the film is old now so I can deal with that. I'd be interested in trying to find a better copy some where to give this another watch and enjoy even more.

"Beyond the Law" (as it is also known as) is a poorly made Spaghetti Western starring Antonio Sabato who portrays an immigrant from Europe named "Ben Novack" who has journeyed out west to lend his knowledge to a silver mining company. Lee Van Cleef plays a thief named "Billy Joe Cudlip" who, along with his partners, "Preacher" (Lionel Stander) and "Al" (Al Hoosman), conspire to rob the payroll from the stagecoach and the silver from the mine. Bud Spencer (who later gained fame in the "Trinity" movies) plays the mine owner named "James Cooper". Additionally, bandits led by "Burton" (Gordon Mitchell) come along and rob, kill and create chaos in general. Anyway, having given the basic details of the plot I would just like to say that this is one of the worst westerns I have ever seen. The acting (for the most part) was abysmal, the script was weak, the character interactions were disjointed and the scenes had no rhythm or flow. Now, it could very well be that one reason for the incoherence between scenes was due to extreme editing after the film was shot. But even so, this was a dreadful movie completely lacking direction and expertise. For example, in one scene the townsmen have set up an ambush for the bandits. Yet the ambush is conceived so sloppily that they leave a hill open with plenty of cover and concealment for the bandits to take up a defensive position and return fire. If that wasn't bad enough, both sides prefer using pistols at long range rather than rifles. Even more incredible is the astounding accuracy all the main characters seem to have shooting these pistols at moving targets who are running and scampering all over the place. It defies common sense. Anyhow, in spite of the major flaws in this film there were a couple of elements which were slightly positive. I thought Lee Van Cleef and Bud Spencer gave decent performances in their respective roles. Likewise, Graziella Granata ("Sally Davis") was very good-looking. But other than that I see nothing worthwhile in this film.

Not really a "spaghetti' western, though filmed in Italy. No one wears a duster, and it's not really very violent till near the end. The movie has a weird "European" feel to it, as if the makers had no idea what the Wild West was really like. The "villagers" of Silvertown have an Old World style festival, for instance, everyone polkaing and playing happy music that would have been perfect for Oktoberfest. Other errors are rife. One of the heroes claims to come from "Czechoslovakia"!? (A nation that didn't exist at the time - anyone who came from the area would have said they were from Bohemia, Moravia, or Austria-Hungary). Bullets are stopped by thin wooden slats. Pistols outshoot rifles. Guns can't hit a man less than 30 yards away because he's "too high up". A guy is hit by a bullet wound right in the middle of his left chest, and the wound is declared to be "not serious". A saloon singer sings, and behaves, like a European cabaret star. A western stable names a horse Taras Bulba. It's unintentionally hilarious.Sadly when the movie tries to be funny, it catastrophically fails. The "humorous" bible-quoting crook has a long unfunny scene with a group of kids that makes no sense at all in my dubbed version. Maybe it was funnier in Italian. There are also errors of plot. Lee Van Cleef is first seen on horseback. But a major theme for the next 45 minutes of the movie is how he needs to get himself a horse. There is a big scene where Van Cleef defends the dubious virtue of a dance hall girl, but then he never picks up on a potential romance with her. She just gets discarded along with other plot points. Van Cleef is fun to watch as always. The other actors are varying degrees of suckitude, and the movie, in general, makes little sense. There are a couple of reasonably good scenes, which I guess is reason enough to watch this if you got it in a pack of 20 Westerns, which I did. But it sure as heck isn't worth looking up on its own, unless you are writing a book on Lee Van Cleef or something.

I think I sold this movie short the first couple of times through -- It is an odd mishmash to be sure, and may be the last of the Italian 'Cowboy Movies' made just before the Spaghetti Western chic had completely taken over. It is an Italian movie made by Italians with a few Gringos in the leads (Lee Van Cleef, Lionel Stander and Bud Spencer, who was a Brother, but never mind) just like a Spaghetti, yet is decidedly traditional in it's nature. If it wasn't for the comparatively excessive violence & lack of Native American characters, this could have been made with Randolph Scott and Robert Mitchum on the Universal backlots over a few weekends.There was a period of time when Italy was making films that were an obvious attempt to compete with the "B-fare" Westerns coming out of the states, and BEYOND THE LAW sort of straddles the divide between that time of Italian made Cowboy Movies (SHOOTOUT AT RED SANDS, the overlooked FURY OF THE APACHES, GRAND CANYON MASSACRE and MINNESOTA CLAY) and when the Spaghetti mystique took over in the wake of successes like THE GOOD THE BAD AND THE UGLY, DEATH RIDES A HORSE, not to mention the SARTANA and DJANGO films -- All of which come from a different cultural sensibility that stressed style and delivery rather than trying to mimic John Ford. It was really with the walloping masterpiece of ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST that the Yanks were forced to sort of sit up & take notice of people like Sergio Leone, Ennio Moriconne, Antonio DeTeffe, Gianni Garko, Franco Nero, and Enzo G. Castellari. After about 1970 European made Westerns didn't concern themselves much with square dance scenes, romance/comedy subplots, and scenes where dozens of riders chase a stagecoach.So BEYOND THE LAW is a sort of throw-back film to 1965 or so, with the great Lee Van Cleef excellently cast as a scruffy two bit chicken thief who turns lawman to help an utterly square, uncorruptable and interminably cheerful young mining executive just off the boat from Europe (Antonio Sabato, also very well chosen for his role) protect the payroll and silver from a mining community from ... himself. And his two crony con men (Stander and Spencer, both excellent), plus a pack of hyenas led by a caped madman (Spaghetti legend Gordon Mitchell) obsessed with stealing the loot that inconveniently turn up to give Van Cleef a chance to not only be selected as the community's new sheriff, but allow Van Cleef a chance to finally "find himself" in the role, even if he was first handed the star as part of a put-on in an elaborate swindle that just didn't work out the way it could have.So BEYOND THE LAW is not just a Euro Western but a Caper Movie about a Heist, an Action/Adventure Buddy Film, with touches of Comedy/Romance as Van Cleef finds himself responding to the admiration of the local burlesque queen (gorgeous Graziella Granata, who even gets time to belt out a rowdy stage number), and a Fish Out of Water "dramedy" as Antonio Sabata goes from a cultured immigrant to a cold-blooded if unusually polite killer: It is his sheer, earnest cluelessness that finds itself eating away at Van Cleef's otherwise rotten heart, who goes from an unwashed dirtbag to the hero of the community in 90 minutes whether or not he wanted to -- Sabato simply charms him over and makes his character realize that destiny has oddly thrust itself upon him, and he takes up the mantle of lawman with a grim chagrin that is actually quite amusing and sort of gets you right there (thump) when all is said and done: Some law is better than no law, even if it comes from the strangest places.Such is the lesson learned by Van Cleef, and it's interesting to view his character here as sort of a "prequel" to the jaded, disillusioned & cynical lawman/bringer of justice he would play in so many movies afterward, and a couple before even. This is no Douglas Mortimer, but a totally different person -- A fine testament to his qualities as an actor, which is something that most folks overlook in favor of a black clad "total badass" who is the best shot in the Carolinas or whatever. Fans of his work are hereby admonished to seek this movie out and give it three or four screenings if that's what it takes. Yeah it's trying to look and sound like Hollywood, not Cinematalia, but after ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST Italian Pasta directors stopped trying to prove they could do John Ford, and this film stands of a relic of when that was still an ongoing proposition.Now, finding the RIGHT version of this film may take a couple tries: Brentwood Home Video and a couple others of those 'Bargain Bin Box Set' issuers of Public Domain Movie fare DVDs are circulating an almost colorless 85 minute version, which is too bad: Diamond Entertainment and some outfit known as "Quality Digital Productions" both have a digitally color-restored 105 minute version that, while fullframe & "squishy" in spots from the improperly lensed transfer, contains every last minute described for an English language presentation -- Almost twenty minutes longer, including the burlesque scene and a good old knock down drag out barroom brawl that has more in common with THE WAR WAGON than it does with THE FORGOTTEN PISTOLERO. But that's sort of the charm: Seeing all those guys scurrying around dressed in those silly outfits, trying to be Cowboys rather than just existing as the larger than life iconic figures we usually think of in reference to Spaghetti Westerns ... Thank God for Franco Nero, I guess.*** out of ****