It's both sad and ironic that Terence Hills portrayal 'Lucky Luke' had nothing in common with the comic-character but the name and Jolly Jumper, the talking horse. Ironic because Hills parade-roles, 'Trinity' and 'Nobody', both owned more to Lucky Luke than probably actor and director (Enzo Barboni) would care to admit.Many "Trinity" fans consider "Man of the East" an unofficial prequel: here Hill plays Sir Thomas Fitzpatrick Phillip Moore, a textbook Greenhorn who has arrived in the rugged Wild West claim his father's inheritance. The inheritance consists of a ram shackled old farm and three of his fathers cronies, who've taken it upon themselves to turn Thomas into gun-totting cowboy.Having mentioned Lucky Luke, only at the end does Terence Hill (of course) turn into the faster-than-your-shadow, damsel-saving gunslinger but originally his character, Sir Thomas, is taken straight from the Lucky Luke comic book "The Greenhorn" – an archetypical bowler hat wearing, tea totting English gentleman, blissfully unaware that this is the West and not Kensington.At first, the absence of Hill's "Trinity"-partner Bud Spencer is painfully obvious. However, Bull Schmidt (Gregory Walcott), the jovial friar Holy Joe (Harry Carey Jr) and Monkey Smith (Dominic Barto, who had previously played a steel-eyed killer in "Trinity"), playing Hills mentors and surrogate fathers, make a quirky trio, soon compensating for the absence of Spencer. Plus, we have director Enzo Barboni who knows the terrain of the spaghetti western comedy like the back of his palm.The movie has all the elements necessary to please fans of early Hill/Spencer/Barboni co operations but never quiet reaches the high level of mentioned "Trinity"- and "Nobody" films. Still, far better than anything Hill was starring in the past 15 years and infinitely better than the dreadful "Lucky Luke" films.

I allways liked Bud Spencer and Terence Hill films as a kid. And I still think some of them are quiet good and fun to watch, but this one is different (in a way). Of course there's fights in the typical terence hill style (with the favorite opponent Riccardo Pizzuti), but then there's this fine irony, the melancoly sometimes and the story of the greenhorn coming to the wild west, having no idea about it and getting into big trouble without realizing it.

This is, except perhaps for Peckinpah's "Pat Garrett & Billy The Kid", my favorite movie at all. It's biggest quality is its completeness in almost every respect. Completeness in its themes, in its means, and a glorious cast.It's a film most of all about friendship (I most often think of the scene where monkey, usually the most 'rude' of the protagonists, eagerly grasps the last letter of their dead friend, and then, realizing he can't read at all, is forced to pass the letter to Holy Joe, but in fact the friendship theme is present in the whole movie), about the antagonism of freedom and civilization, about the need and the struggle to find and defend your own position towards everything surrounding you (the 'star' to follow), about how dreams and reality can influence each other (remember the scene of Candida experiencing the man of her dreams riding towards her in a gracious slow motion, while Terence Hill in fact cusses his half-dead horse), about technological progress, it's consequences, and about almost every other theme that has ever been dealt with in 80 years of western history.The movie's means are comedy, satire, drama, buddy movie, a really great musical score by Guido & Maurizio de Angelis, and all style elements of the classical western.The cast is superb, creating at least half a dozen unique characters you can root on; unfortunately with one exception: Yanti Somer's lousy performance as Candida.Another wonderful thing about this movie, is that it doesn't condemn any of its characters; everyone has his place in the film's world and gets his respect by script, direction and cast: the protagonists as well as the whores, the 'villains', the bounty hunters and the jailers. By the way: This quality also characterizes most films by Sam Peckinpah.

I saw this film back in 1972 in a small town where I lived. It came to the theater as "The Man from the East". I loved it! I walked out of the theater with my gut aching from laughing so much. That was my first experience of seeing Terence Hill. I have been a fan of his ever since. To this day I tell my wife of some of the scenes. I wish it would come out on video so that my wife will not think that I am making things up. It is a film for the whole family and I would be one of the first ones to buy it if it ever came out!