The first and, presumably, best of director Baldi's six Spaghetti Westerns (I'd watched his last BLINDMAN [1971] co-starring Ringo Starr[!] as part of the Italian B-movie retrospective during the 2004 Venice Film Festival) finds genre icon Franco Nero in good stoic form as a man out to avenge his father's death (incidentally, it was the star's own first genre outing
to be followed that same year by two even better efforts in Sergio Corbucci's star-making DJANGO and Lucio Fulci's MASSACRE TIME).
Against his better judgement, he's accompanied on the peril-fraught odyssey (which takes him from Texas to Mexico) by his younger sibling played by Alberto Dell'Acqua (using the hilarious pseudonym Cole Kitosch!). However, this turns out to have a strong bearing on the plot despite typical scenes in which the inexperienced and impulsive kid has to be rescued within an inch of his life by big brother since the man they're after results in being Kitosch's real father (having raped Nero's mother immediately after bumping off her outlaw hubby, an event seen in a rather limp flashback). In the meantime, the villain has been lording it over a poor Mexican province (as much at ease casually picking off rebelling peones with his prize pistol as when playing the pipe organ in his living-room!) aided by uncouth and alcoholic Alcalde Livio Lorenzon (even if it's later established that the latter's more human, and bitter, than he lets on).
With this in mind, the script demonstrates atypical care towards characterization in fact, another figure who's given his due is that of the lawyer played by Luigi Pistilli (a versatile "Euro-Cult" stalwart) who secretly hopes to organize an uprising against the tyrant, and constantly pleads with Nero to join their ranks. By the way, one further twist on the Spaghetti Western scenario is that, at one point, it's the villainous hordes who are ambushed by the good guys! The action throughout, then, is pretty good (including some quite vigorous fistfights) starting off with the credit sequence involving a lengthy shoot-out, eventually stopped by cool sheriff Nero, between a bounty hunter and his quarry; the latter is accompanied by the evocative and melancholy theme tune (the work of Spanish composer Anton Abril), which can be heard several times during the course of the film without overstaying its welcome.
For the record, I'd first gotten hold of this one in Italian which is always the preferred language for me with this type of film but it kept skipping over a good part of that opening confrontation due to some glitch (the same fate, albeit to an ever greater extent, had actually befallen another Spaghetti Western with Nero that I acquired in the past but subsequently couldn't watch as a result i.e. Luigi Bazzoni's MAN, PRIDE AND VENGEANCE [1968]); in the case of Texas, ADIOS I had to make do with the next best thing an English-dubbed edition (even if Nero himself, who usually re-records his own dialogue parts on the English soundtracks of his films, is dubbed, too). At the end of the day, this is a minor genre offering but a reasonably effective and enjoyable one nevertheless.
Against his better judgement, he's accompanied on the peril-fraught odyssey (which takes him from Texas to Mexico) by his younger sibling played by Alberto Dell'Acqua (using the hilarious pseudonym Cole Kitosch!). However, this turns out to have a strong bearing on the plot despite typical scenes in which the inexperienced and impulsive kid has to be rescued within an inch of his life by big brother since the man they're after results in being Kitosch's real father (having raped Nero's mother immediately after bumping off her outlaw hubby, an event seen in a rather limp flashback). In the meantime, the villain has been lording it over a poor Mexican province (as much at ease casually picking off rebelling peones with his prize pistol as when playing the pipe organ in his living-room!) aided by uncouth and alcoholic Alcalde Livio Lorenzon (even if it's later established that the latter's more human, and bitter, than he lets on).
With this in mind, the script demonstrates atypical care towards characterization in fact, another figure who's given his due is that of the lawyer played by Luigi Pistilli (a versatile "Euro-Cult" stalwart) who secretly hopes to organize an uprising against the tyrant, and constantly pleads with Nero to join their ranks. By the way, one further twist on the Spaghetti Western scenario is that, at one point, it's the villainous hordes who are ambushed by the good guys! The action throughout, then, is pretty good (including some quite vigorous fistfights) starting off with the credit sequence involving a lengthy shoot-out, eventually stopped by cool sheriff Nero, between a bounty hunter and his quarry; the latter is accompanied by the evocative and melancholy theme tune (the work of Spanish composer Anton Abril), which can be heard several times during the course of the film without overstaying its welcome.
For the record, I'd first gotten hold of this one in Italian which is always the preferred language for me with this type of film but it kept skipping over a good part of that opening confrontation due to some glitch (the same fate, albeit to an ever greater extent, had actually befallen another Spaghetti Western with Nero that I acquired in the past but subsequently couldn't watch as a result i.e. Luigi Bazzoni's MAN, PRIDE AND VENGEANCE [1968]); in the case of Texas, ADIOS I had to make do with the next best thing an English-dubbed edition (even if Nero himself, who usually re-records his own dialogue parts on the English soundtracks of his films, is dubbed, too). At the end of the day, this is a minor genre offering but a reasonably effective and enjoyable one nevertheless.