It’s nearly inconceivable to have a radical dialogue in regards to the fantasy of the American West and the way in which it permeated popular culture with out turning one’s consideration to Italy. Italian filmmakers like Sergio Leone and Sergio Corbucci had a discipline day with cowboy iconography within the Sixties, churning out a collection of violent Westerns that many lovers would say rival or surpass the American Westerns made by the likes of John Ford and Howard Hawks. From their largely European casts and overtly Catholic imagery to their hot-blooded tales of violent revenge, the so-called Spaghetti Westerns have been distinctly Italian merchandise. However their existence was solely potential because of the infinite fascination that Italians had with America and the myths that Hollywood liked to perpetuate.
Italy’s love of American cowboys supplies the backdrop for “Heads or Tails,” the brand new movie from “The Story of King Crab” administrators Alessio Rigo de Righi and Matteo Zoppis that when once more feels prefer it was ripped from the yellowing pages of a gorgeous outdated storybook. It’s the flip of the twentieth century and legendary entertainer Buffalo Invoice Cody (John C. Reilly) has introduced his blockbuster Wild West present throughout the Atlantic Ocean to Europe. His touring circus of lassoing, sharpshooting, and cowboy crooning has become a scorching ticket amongst Italy’s elite, together with his rigorously curated stage presence giving these aristocrats the sense that they’re interacting with an actual reside cowboy.
A hustler to his bones, Cody typically struggles to reconcile his stage persona as a Wild West adventurer with the truth that he’s the type of man who sails to Europe to entertain rich Italians. Throughout a dialog with a wealthy native farmer who boasts in regards to the roping expertise of his personal cowboys, Cody agrees to stage a rodeo contest between the Italian ranchers and his staff of educated professionals. The farmer agrees to his phrases, although he asks his star ranch-hand Santino (Allesandro Borghi) to take a dive as a part of a playing scheme. Santino, who’s as proud as he’s devilishly good-looking, reluctantly agrees however is unable to undergo together with his promise. He wins the competition, humiliating the People whereas alienating his boss. With nothing left for him at residence, he decides to flee the scene with Rosa (Nadia Tereszkiewicz), his real love who simply occurs to be the boss’ spouse. For good measure, she shoots her husband within the head on her method out the door.
Along with his repute on the road, Buffalo Invoice decides to go after the runaway lovers. The showman is just not notably expert as a bounty hunter, however he as soon as once more struggles to separate his persona from actuality. Reilly provides a predictably glorious efficiency because the legendary entertainer, nailing each his on-stage bravado and the personal moments of insecurity the place he hesitates to drop the act as a result of he’s not clear what masks he’d don as a replacement. With no straightforward approach to flip down his employer’s father’s request to catch his son’s assassin, he units out on his personal journey via the Italian countryside.
Cody is diminished to a supporting character in the remainder of the movie — a pity, given how entertaining Reilly’s efficiency is, nevertheless it makes narrative sense. The main focus shifts to Santino and Rosa, who shortly discover that the preliminary euphoria of escaping routines doesn’t shield towards relationship struggles. The surface world mistakenly believes that Santino killed Rosa’s father due to the bounty positioned on his head, and he quickly turns into a folks hero amongst revolutionaries who wish to seize the technique of manufacturing. Quite than right his admirers and clarify that Rosa is the killer, he embraces the newfound fame and finds his public masks fusing to his face in a fashion that’s not in contrast to what occurred to Buffalo Invoice. Because the story takes a brilliantly surreal flip that can stay unspoiled, Rosa is compelled to reckon with the grim indisputable fact that the tales we inform ourselves, whether or not they’re pulpy Western novels or sweeping romances inside our personal lives, are sometimes written by the victors and clouded by their very own delusions and needs.
“Heads or Tails” is visually beautiful, with Italy’s forests and mountains captured in a wealthy celluloid shade palette that can look as marvelous in 100 years as it will have a century in the past. The storybook shot composition advantages from the truth that only a few Westerns have been ever truly filmed in Italy, as Sergio Leone and his colleagues primarily shot their out of doors sequences within the deserts of Spain. The movie provides one of many world’s biggest Western-producing nations its personal second within the highlight, and the nation’s landscapes greater than rise to the event.
“Heads or Tails” builds on the playbook that Rigo de Righi and Zoppis established with their first movie, exploring the ways in which time erodes our shared tales regardless of presenting itself in a bundle that’s totally timeless. Sentimental when it must be and subversive at any time when boredom lurks across the nook, “Heads or Tails” is a becoming second entry in what may quickly grow to be some of the stylistically distinct our bodies of labor amongst right this moment’s lively filmmakers.
Grade: B+
“Heads or Tails” premiered on the 2025 Cannes Movie Pageant. It’s at the moment looking for U.S. distribution.
Wish to keep updated on IndieWire’s movie evaluations and significant ideas? Subscribe right here to our newly launched publication, In Evaluate by David Ehrlich, by which our Chief Movie Critic and Head Evaluations Editor rounds up the most effective new evaluations and streaming picks together with some unique musings — all solely out there to subscribers.