4 Dollars of Revenge (1966) – A Movie A Day 2021 #7
4 Dollars of Revenge (1966) – A Movie A Day 2021 #7
I often cite The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly as my favorite movie of all time, so it should come as a surprise to no one that I love spaghetti westerns. As much as I love the genre though, I feel like the number of spaghetti westerns I’ve actually seen is pretty low for a self-proclaimed enthusiast. I’ve been trying to rectify that situation over the past few years, and that often leads me to buying and watching cheap, random spaghetti westerns on various collected DVD and Blu Ray sets. And that’s exactly what led me to today’s movie, 4 Dollars of Revenge.
4 Dollars of Revenge is an Italian western that, from the title, sounds like it might be in the vein of Sergio Leone’s Dollars trilogy. While there might be some superficial similarities between 4 Dollars of Revenge and the first two of Sergio Leone’s Dollars films, I think the makers of 4 Dollars of Revenge were just trying to cash in on the familiarity of the title. 4 Dollars isn’t bad, but it definitely feels like a rushed attempt to capitalize on the popularity of Italian westerns at the time.
The story is about a Captain in the U.S. Army at the end of the American Civil War (1865). Captain Roy Dexter is sent on a mission to take a fortune in Confederate coins to Washington, but after becoming the lone survivor of an attack from Mexican bandits, Dexter is framed for orchestrating the whole fiasco. Dexter is sent to prison, but he escapes and attempts to hunt down the men responsible for ruining his life. That’s where the “4 dollars” of the title come in, because Dexter leaves one of the Confederate coins near each body as he goes about his mission. Although, the coins are worth way more than a dollar, so again, the filmmakers/marketers were just trying to cash in on Dollars.
Looking at the case of the Blu Ray I bought for one dollar at at a Dollar General (which contains a second spaghetti western that I’m sure I’ll be watching soon), one of the writers of the original Django from 1966 wrote 4 Dollars of Revenge. That got me extremely excited, because Django is another of my favorite classic Italian Westerns. Watching the movie though, I was a bit disappointed in how choppy the story felt, especially in the beginning. Granted, there was a lot of setup to be done to establish characters and potential villains before Dexter got sent to jail, but the early scenes felt like a jumble of disparate scenes that had very little relation to each other. Up through Dexter’s brief trials and imprisonment, I was doing well just to keep up with who was who and how they all related to each other. The plot settles down a bit once the revenge starts, but I felt like the movie has a weak opening, something Django absolutely did not have. Looking at the IMDB page might have given me a reason for the scattered scenes though. There are a bunch of writing credits for 4 Dollars which make me think it was written by committee. That’s rarely ever a good idea, and this movie is a prime example why.
I did like the characters though. I was pulling for Dexter to get his revenge, and the bad guys were sufficiently scummy and fun in their own ways. The action got a bit silly at times (like seeing a whole bunch of guys fall off of rocks in the exact same way throughout the entire film), but it was still fun to watch. I also enjoyed some of the bookends the movie offered in the final scenes. I like a good callback within a movie, and 4 Dollars had at least two high-quality callbacks to earlier scenes. I also really enjoy the idea of leaving a coin with each body as Dexter’s revenge is enacted. Dexter didn’t set out to murder everyone, but his hand was forced, so he took advantage of the situation in the best way he could. There were some really good visuals throughout the movie too, especially in a particular night scene where Dexter is alone in the dark with a man he intends to kill.
So overall, 4 Dollars of Revenge isn’t great, but I enjoyed it fine. I’m also a huge spaghetti western fan though, so I’d only really recommend it to my fellow enthusiasts and completionists. It’s not as violent or funny as a lot of the more popular and well-made Italian westerns are, and I think it could get kind of boring to action fans or even revenge movie fans. I think it was worth the fifty cents I paid for it though.