Four for the Raid

The Professionals. After coolly gunning down ten treacherous bandidos in a steamy Mexican arroyo, four scraggly do-gooders take a long look at the dead men's mounts. They hate killing horses, but you don't leave that kind of evidence roaming around. "They're harmless," says one. "Nothing's harmless in this desert unless it's dead," snaps a pardner. Though the horses are spared, everything else that moves is soon either dying, wounded or dodging.

Trigger fingers twitching, the four hirelings have just embarked on what they believe to be a mission of mercy. The pay is $10,000 apiece. The time is the early 1900s. Villa's revolutionaries are up to trouble on both sides of the border, but few can match the hot-eyed fury of Jesus Raza (Jack Palance). "What a name for the bloodiest cutthroat in Mexico!" roars Land Baron Ralph Bellamy. "Last week he kidnaped my wife." When the contraband wife is $100,000 worth of woman like Claudia Cardinale, matters are urgent enough to enlist Lee Marvin as a former Rough Rider, Woody Strode as a cunning scout, Robert Ryan as a nail-hard ex-cavalryman, and Burt Lancaster as a passionate explosives expert with a yen for "100-proof whisky, 90-proof women and 14-karat gold."

How the four make war on Raza's remote desert stronghold is the raw meat of The Professionals, and there hasn't been a livelier western whoop-up since Villain Palance bared fang and claw against Shane. Only once does the action slow down, during a gum battle between Palance and Lancaster, who seem to be firing off philosophical asides about the life of violence mainly because they need a rest. Most of the dialogue has a whiplash sting, and since the scenario is chiefly concerned with ambushes and train holdups and muscle-hard suspense, there is seldom time out for blather.

"We've got to make them think we're the Mexican army," muses Marvin, plotting strategy after his tight-lipped raiders have secretly witnessed the bandidos justice, meted out bullet by bullet beside the tracks to a whole trainload ol captured Federales. Keeping the good guys and bad guys sharply in his sight at all times, Director Richard Brooks (Elmer Gantry) sets up a neat surprise or two and shows a marksman's instinct for knowing what to do with all that awesome western scenery--he pumps i full of high-gauge performances, guts ingenuity, flaming arrows, dynamite anc hot lead.

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