Revenge, revenge, revenge. Simple, blood-soaked, sweaty revenge.
When the Italians made westerns, they had little interest in the poetry of frontier life or the stirring echoes of history that you often get in American westerns. Nope, these Chianti drinkers were more interested in western stories as violent pulp. The sun-baked vistas (usually of Italy and Spain, passed off as Oklahoma and Missouri) were not beautiful. They were harsh and desolate and dangerous. Godless. Or, if there is a god, he’s trying to kill you.
If someone does you wrong, there’s nothing in this world to argue with your ambition of putting a bullet in that person’s gut immediately.
The weird pull of a revenge story is that the hero is also part-villain. He’s on a murder spree that racks up a body count the beats most horror film slashers. Anyone who stands in the way gets cut down. Because he’s the underdog–he’s either alone or with a small crew who face off against a much larger crew–he often has to employ strategies in which he stalks and toys with his targets before he can take them out. He’s got to play dirty. There’s simply no other way.
There are several films like that and Today We Kill… Tomorrow We Die! is an efficient example of it. It’s the one where Brett Halsey has spent five years in jail because he was framed for crimes actually committed by evil asshole Tatsuya Nakadai (a Japanese actor and favorite of Akira Kurosawa, here playing one exotic-looking probable Mexican). Halsey has spent his entire time behind bars thinking about nothing but revenge, even carving a fake gun out of wood so he can practice his quick-draw.
The very moment that his sentence is up, his whole previous life now destroyed, he gets to work forming his own gang that includes the likes of Bud Spencer and busy character-actor William Berger. The first thirty minutes of the movie is all about that, introducing each new character in a different, clever way while the film wisely avoids much exposition about what’s really going on.
It only gives up the backstory when it absolutely needs to, when it’s really gonna hit you hard, and, even then, it’s a quick flashback.
When the simple plot shifts into high gear, it piles up the bodies high.
This is a satisfying little beast, co-written by Dario Argento with first-time director Tonino Cervi, who keeps things moving at cheetah-speed.