This fitfully amusing Spaghetti western comedy embraces the time-honored concept of incongruity as the source of its laughs and shuns overt shoot'em up violence where the corpses outnumber the horses.
"It Can Be Done, Amigo" opens with our barrel-chested protagonist Hiram Coburn (Bud Spencer of "They Call Me Trinity") sitting atop his horse sprawled out on the ground and trying to convince the steed that it must eventually rise. "How the hell did I ever get stuck with a loser like you?" Hiram complains, "Hell, you feel tired and you drop to the ground like you was dead. It ain't natural in a horse. What do you take me for? You got the idea I'm going to carry you? There's no more water, the sun's hot, and this ain't no place for lunch." Traditionally, horses in westerns dating back to the 1930s and the popular B-westerns of the day depicted the horse as a better friend to the hero than a dog. The horse was always dependable and usually got the hero out of trouble. On the other hand, Coburn's horseRufusis anything but helpful. This reversal of the convention of the intelligent horse is the first example of humor in this western.
The second example of humor is Hiram himself. As played by the big, lovable lug Bud Spencer, Hiram is an off-beat western hero. First, he wears no gun. Instead, he relies on his 'Hulk-like' fists to decimate the opposition. Second, the running gag throughout "It Can Be Done, Amigo" is that Hiram carefully puts on his spectacles before he slam bangs his way through opponents in fistfights. Normally, combatants remove their eyewear before they wade into each other with fists galore. Hiram is virtually indestructible.
Once Hiram convinces Rufus to arise, they run across several wild mustangs and the horses follow our hero until he runs into a group of hardcases that decide that Hiram has stolen the horses. They are about to hang him for horse theft when young Chip Anderson (Renato Cestiè) and his unclean attorneyappear on the scene in a wagon, and the uncle demands that Hiram deserves a trial. The vigilantes still plan to hang Hiram. Little do they know that Hiram has a guardian angel in the person of Sonny Bronston (Jack Palance of "Shane") who intends to see that Hiram marries his sister Mary (Dany Saval) to clear her good name before he shoots him. Consequently, anybody that tries to do evil to Hiram incurs Sonny's wrath. Again, incongruity lends itself to the humor of this lightweight western. The first time that Hiram sees Sonny, our hero describes Sonny to his horse Rufus as "a man with bullets where his brains out to be." Hiram escapes from the calaboose when some outlaws blow it up to rescue one of their own. A vigilante tries to shoot Hiram, but Sonny shoots the rifle out of the guy's hands.
All of this serves as a set-up to Hiram as he rides off into the desert on Rufus and stumbles across the lawyer strewn on his back in the desert and left for dead. The dying attorney plays on Hiram's sentimentality to take care of young Chip and take him to a town called Westland where he owns a broken down ranch. Reluctantly, Hiram accepts this mission. During the scene with the dying lawyer, Hiram repeatedly closes the man's eyes so he can die, but the attorney keeps opening them and issuing Hiram more instructions.
Once they reach Westland, Hiram and Chip meet a man who acts as the preacher and the town lawman and this character tries to buy Chip's land for a $1000 dollars, but the boy refuses to sell. In town, Hiram is mystified by a man who buys up buckets of dirt and eats them. Initially, Hiram believes that the guy must be searching for gold. However, it isn't gold, but oil. Eventually, Hiram is forced to marry Bronston's sister Mary. During a big celebration at their house, a fistfight erupts and during the brawl, oil spouts from the ground. As everybody but Chip and Hiram ride off, Hiram decides to become the man of the house, puts on his spectacles, and enters the house to make a baby with Mary.
No, "It Can Be Done, Amigo" is only about a third as funny as the "Trinity" movies, but it provides an interesting change-of-pace for blood splattered Spaghetti westerns and the production values are solid. Bud Spencer gives his usual, disgusted with everybody performance and he has a running gag where he challenges all comers to wager a bet that the bottom of a can is longer compared with the length of the can.
One thing that does stand out magnificently about this Italian western is the spectacular orchestral score by Luis Enríquez Bacalov who later won an Oscar in for the 1996 movie "Ii Postino." Bacalov also wrote another beautiful score for the Lee Van Cleef Italian western "The Grand Duel." Maurizio Lucidi began his career as an editor on the muscleman epic "Goliath and the Dragon" with Mark Forest and went on to cut the Tony Anthony shoot'em up "A Stranger In Town" as well as the Gordon Scott western "The Tramplers." "It Can Be Done, Amigo" isn't the best Bud Spencer movie, but neither is it the worse, settling somewhere in between.
"It Can Be Done, Amigo" opens with our barrel-chested protagonist Hiram Coburn (Bud Spencer of "They Call Me Trinity") sitting atop his horse sprawled out on the ground and trying to convince the steed that it must eventually rise. "How the hell did I ever get stuck with a loser like you?" Hiram complains, "Hell, you feel tired and you drop to the ground like you was dead. It ain't natural in a horse. What do you take me for? You got the idea I'm going to carry you? There's no more water, the sun's hot, and this ain't no place for lunch." Traditionally, horses in westerns dating back to the 1930s and the popular B-westerns of the day depicted the horse as a better friend to the hero than a dog. The horse was always dependable and usually got the hero out of trouble. On the other hand, Coburn's horseRufusis anything but helpful. This reversal of the convention of the intelligent horse is the first example of humor in this western.
The second example of humor is Hiram himself. As played by the big, lovable lug Bud Spencer, Hiram is an off-beat western hero. First, he wears no gun. Instead, he relies on his 'Hulk-like' fists to decimate the opposition. Second, the running gag throughout "It Can Be Done, Amigo" is that Hiram carefully puts on his spectacles before he slam bangs his way through opponents in fistfights. Normally, combatants remove their eyewear before they wade into each other with fists galore. Hiram is virtually indestructible.
Once Hiram convinces Rufus to arise, they run across several wild mustangs and the horses follow our hero until he runs into a group of hardcases that decide that Hiram has stolen the horses. They are about to hang him for horse theft when young Chip Anderson (Renato Cestiè) and his unclean attorneyappear on the scene in a wagon, and the uncle demands that Hiram deserves a trial. The vigilantes still plan to hang Hiram. Little do they know that Hiram has a guardian angel in the person of Sonny Bronston (Jack Palance of "Shane") who intends to see that Hiram marries his sister Mary (Dany Saval) to clear her good name before he shoots him. Consequently, anybody that tries to do evil to Hiram incurs Sonny's wrath. Again, incongruity lends itself to the humor of this lightweight western. The first time that Hiram sees Sonny, our hero describes Sonny to his horse Rufus as "a man with bullets where his brains out to be." Hiram escapes from the calaboose when some outlaws blow it up to rescue one of their own. A vigilante tries to shoot Hiram, but Sonny shoots the rifle out of the guy's hands.
All of this serves as a set-up to Hiram as he rides off into the desert on Rufus and stumbles across the lawyer strewn on his back in the desert and left for dead. The dying attorney plays on Hiram's sentimentality to take care of young Chip and take him to a town called Westland where he owns a broken down ranch. Reluctantly, Hiram accepts this mission. During the scene with the dying lawyer, Hiram repeatedly closes the man's eyes so he can die, but the attorney keeps opening them and issuing Hiram more instructions.
Once they reach Westland, Hiram and Chip meet a man who acts as the preacher and the town lawman and this character tries to buy Chip's land for a $1000 dollars, but the boy refuses to sell. In town, Hiram is mystified by a man who buys up buckets of dirt and eats them. Initially, Hiram believes that the guy must be searching for gold. However, it isn't gold, but oil. Eventually, Hiram is forced to marry Bronston's sister Mary. During a big celebration at their house, a fistfight erupts and during the brawl, oil spouts from the ground. As everybody but Chip and Hiram ride off, Hiram decides to become the man of the house, puts on his spectacles, and enters the house to make a baby with Mary.
No, "It Can Be Done, Amigo" is only about a third as funny as the "Trinity" movies, but it provides an interesting change-of-pace for blood splattered Spaghetti westerns and the production values are solid. Bud Spencer gives his usual, disgusted with everybody performance and he has a running gag where he challenges all comers to wager a bet that the bottom of a can is longer compared with the length of the can.
One thing that does stand out magnificently about this Italian western is the spectacular orchestral score by Luis Enríquez Bacalov who later won an Oscar in for the 1996 movie "Ii Postino." Bacalov also wrote another beautiful score for the Lee Van Cleef Italian western "The Grand Duel." Maurizio Lucidi began his career as an editor on the muscleman epic "Goliath and the Dragon" with Mark Forest and went on to cut the Tony Anthony shoot'em up "A Stranger In Town" as well as the Gordon Scott western "The Tramplers." "It Can Be Done, Amigo" isn't the best Bud Spencer movie, but neither is it the worse, settling somewhere in between.