Wednesday, May 19, 2010

Keoma Can Be Seen On Movie Downloads

By Traci Herring

Keoma is something like "The Last Spaghetti Western". The film came out right at the end of the genre's lifespan as a marketable commodity, and it seems to look back upon the era with a sense of both nostalgia and sadness. It's something of an apocalyptic film as far as spaghetti westerns go, and definitely one of the all time must see movie downloads as far as the genre goes.

Many spaghetti westerns took previous films in the genre, or in traditional American westerns, and reworked them into something new, and that's what Keoma does with Django. This time the hero doesn't carry a coffin with a machine gun in it, but he does use a sawed off shotgun and a pistol like nobody's business. There's an interesting existential angle to the whole thing, making it sort of the spaghetti western answer to The Seventh Seal.

Beyond just the atmosphere, the film really is truly existential in more ways than one. The film takes a lot of strange, random turns that can only be explained as "the universe is a strange place!" The movie really does throw some surprises at you and really lives up to Camus' quote, that the most existential thing to experience would be to die in a random car accident for no reason at all.

Keoma is on a quest to liberate the town from the corrupt baron who runs it. Along the way, he has to duke it out with his three brothers. All four love their father, their father loves all four, but the three hate Keoma and Keoma hates the three. They call a cease fire upon one another for as long as their father lives.

A big part of the film's atmosphere is the soundtrack. It's not just the usual drums and whistling you hear in spaghetti westerns. It does use those classic Italo-western instruments and composition styles, but it mixes that with some strange, hippie-esque folk rock to create a complete, one of a kind sound that you won't hear in any other movie anywhere.

The movie is full of cool little moments, like when Keoma shoots a gang of bad guys and saves the final bullet, handing it to the man he didn't shoot as a reminder that he could have died. Or when Keoma is strapped to a wagon wheel and uses it to roll away to freedom.

Like so many great stories, Keoma is really about that one thing that we can all relate to and understand: Family. As Keoma struggles to stay close to his father in spite of the hatred that comes from his brothers, you'll see a reflection of some part of your own family, all of its dysfunctions and all of the upsides of being in a family.

The movie is loaded with great action, weird atmosphere, cool, strange music and fascinating characters. It's exciting, thought provoking, surprising, moving and just plain odd and eerie. It really is a one of a kind film, not just in the spaghetti western genre, but in all of film, period, and it really does take a whole new meaning to the term "revisionist western".

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