Companeros

Sergio Corbucci's Zapata western, with Franco Nero as a Swedish arms dealer and Tomas Milian as a Mexican revolutionary, thrown together across a chaotic, funny, violent border. Jack Palance turns up as a one-handed sadist with a pet hawk and a grudge.

It is more playful than Corbucci's bleak films, but the politics are real underneath the banter, and Morricone's title theme is one of his most propulsive. The mismatched-partners structure carries it.

One of the most purely entertaining spaghetti westerns, with a conscience under the fun.