Flashback

The Professionals (1966)

Burt Lancaster, Claudia Cardinale and Lee Marvin star in Richard Brooks’ classic Western from 1966, The Professionals.
Burt Lancaster, Claudia Cardinale and Lee Marvin star in Richard Brooks’ classic Western from 1966, The Professionals.

The pulse-pounding music begins before there are even any visuals on the screen. Then the lead characters are introduced before the opening credits roll. This is going to be a different kind of movie.

I had joined the Army on the 90-day delay plan, was most likely on the road to Vietnam, but still had more than two months before I had to report for basic training.

The Professionals (1966)

Cast: Burt Lancaster, Lee Marvin, Robert Ryan, Jack Palance, Claudia Cardinale, Woody Strode, Ralph Bellamy

Director: Richard Brooks

Rating: PG-13

Running time: 1 hour, 57 minutes

Remembered by: Bill McCloud, of Pryor, Olka., author of the poetry collection, The Smell of the Light: Vietnam, 1968-1969 (Balkan Books). In the month of February he had 15 poems appear in five literary magazines.

This was by no means the first time I had gone to a drive-in movie with my dad, but it would be the last. Not because he died shortly after this, or anything like that. But once I joined the Army (and did go to Vietnam) any of my brief trips home would now be spent with my girlfriend.

A man's wife has been kidnapped by a Mexican outlaw and taken south of the border, into the Painted Mountains. The husband hires four men who are specialists and pulls them together into a group. You have the gunman and natural leader, the horse wrangler, the hunter and scout, and the dynamite man.

The last thing my dad ever did before we left the house was pop some popcorn on top of the stove and fill up some generous-size bags. Hell, we could afford to buy popcorn but it never tasted as good as what he popped and seasoned at home.

They're guaranteed $10,000 each if they successfully complete their "mission of mercy" and rescue the wife from the "bloodiest cutthroat in Mexico." But these men are up to it. Burt Lancaster, Lee Marvin, Woody Strode and Robert Ryan are not going to let down the moviegoers.

My dad was a WWII Navy combat veteran and red-faced preacher of the gospel who occasionally had trouble turning the other cheek. We both knew, or at least he did, what I was about to be heading in to.

Well, they grab the woman, bring her back to her husband, and discover that she hadn't really been kidnapped. Her husband was abusive and "the Mexican outlaw" was actually her longtime lover. So now the heroes rescue the woman for real and send her and her lover away to safety. But in doing so they willingly forfeit the 10 grand each that had been promised to them.

Just a few years ago a reviewer looking back on this movie -- The Professionals -- said it didn't hold up because the ending was unrealistic. Those men, this scribe said, would never have willingly given up all that money for some woman they didn't know.

He had missed the entire point. They sure as hell would. I know because I actually watched them do it. And if you don't believe me you can ask my dad. He saw them do it, too.

MovieStyle on 03/09/2018

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