Mannaja - the ax of death

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Movie
German title Mannaja - the ax of death
Original title Mannaja
Country of production Italy
original language Italian
Publishing year 1977
length 96 minutes
Age rating FSK 16 (shortened) / unchecked (uncut)
Rod
Director Sergio Martino
script Sergio Martino
Sauro Scavolini
production Luciano Martino
music Guido & Maurizio De Angelis
camera Federico Zanni
cut Eugenio Alabiso
occupation

Mannaja - The ax of death (alternative title: The Last of the Bounty Killers , Original: Mannaja ) from 1977 is one of the late spaghetti westerns by the director Sergio Martino .

action

The bounty hunter Mannaja, whose name comes from an Indian language and literally means “throwing ax”, chases a fugitive criminal through a swampy area and uses the weapon from which it is named. With his prisoner Burt Craven he comes to the desolate city of Suttonville to collect the expected bounty from the resident Marshall, as well as to take revenge on the overpowering McGowan, whom he blames for the death of his father. McGowan controls with his people, whose right hand is a certain Valler, the whole city including a profitable silver mine and lets his workers toil for him under almost inhuman conditions.

When he arrives, Mannaja is received in an unfriendly manner. They want him to disappear, which leads to extremely brutal arguments between him as a good marksman and Valler's men, which the strange stranger can win. Before that he was able to steal a substantial sum from Valler playing cards, and he decides to stay in town; he lets his prisoner Craven go. From then on, he observed Valler's goings-on from a certain distance, witnessed how he exploited workers in the mines and how he assaults his boss's silver transports on his own account.

Mannaja then goes to the godly McGowan and offers him his services, which the aging and wheelchair- dependent entrepreneur initially rejects. Since his business has suffered from constant attacks, Ed McGowan plans to move to New Orleans with his young daughter, Deborah , to spend his old age there. Valler now finally wants to get rid of the unwelcome stranger, incites some dodgy people on Mannaja, who attack him, but only seriously injure him. Fortunately, in this condition he is discovered by wandering showmen and finally treated.

When McGowan's daughter Deborah is supposedly kidnapped by Valler's captors, he forced Mannaja to bring him back to his daughter. But the handover ends in a fiasco. Mannaja only now realizes that the kidnapping victim is making common cause with her fiancé Valler, conspiring against her father in order to extortionate him. However, since the bandits can not find the ransom money provided by the brave fighting Mannaja, they torture him. They also force him to pull out the previously buried gold in order to then leave him to his fate in a desert. Here he is found and rescued by the fugitive Burt Craven, whom he once gave freedom. However, as a result of the hour-long ordeal, his eyesight suffers.

Meanwhile, McGowan is more or less disempowered, incapacitated and dismissed from all posts by the ambitious Valler. Encouraged by his new privileges, he demands almost inhuman exertion from the miners, but they rebel against his reign of terror, and a bloody uprising ensues, to which countless miners, but also a number of Valler's henchmen, fall victim. However, Valler uses the situation to get rid of the now uncomfortable McGowan and shoots him in cold blood. However, due to the loss of workers, the mine remains closed.

At the end of the film, the visually impaired Mannaja kills the traitorous Craven, as well as summoned followers around their client Valler, whom he also fatally injures in a final duel.

Reviews

"Later spaghetti westerns, who indulge in wide-spread brutalities and serve mass murder as entertainment."

- Lexicon of international film

The "cobbler variant of Keoma ", as Christian Keßler writes, "Maurizio Merli's transfer from the streets of Rome to the Western does not pass the audience painlessly, who has to watch a litany of senseless and unconscious violence," said Francesco Mininni . Laura and Morando Morandini were also negative : "A festival of sadistic, brutal violence, this time with demagogic populism."

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Mannaja - The ax of death. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used 
  2. ↑ Keßler: Welcome to Hell. 2002, p. 142
  3. ↑ in Magazine italiano TV
  4. ↑ in: Telesette