Absolutely the worst movie.

I wanted to like it more than I actually did... But much of the humor totally escaped me and I walked out only mildly impressed.

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Lee Van Cleef introduces the sardonic Sabata character in this film where he plays the title role. This man always kills with a twinkle in the eye and he twinkles like a star in this film as the bodies pile up. Most of them are chalked up to him with a few to spare for his sidekicks, Ignazio Spalla a porky Mexican bandit, Aldo Conti a most athletic Indian, and William Berger named banjo who makes some mighty interesting music on it.Sabata is up against the good city fathers of Daugherty, Texas who have the chutzpah to rob an army payroll and who want to use the money to buy up a lot of land so the railroad coming through has to pay them big time. The gang is led by a most epicene villain Franco Ressel. He seems to have a limitless amount of gunslingers, but Sabata and company whittle them down considerably, some in wholesale bunches.Nothing to take too seriously here folks. Western pasta now being served.

SABATA is a stylish, well-made and action-packed spaghetti western, almost but not quite up there with DJANGO. The excellent Lee Van Cleef gives an assured performance as the gun-toting man in black who makes short work of various bad guys and henchmen pitted against him.The plot is simple stuff: a wide-ranging criminal gang, whose members occupy all levels of society, rob a bank and steal a sizable haul. Sabata foils the plot and returns the money, only to fall foul of the men responsible. He thinks he deserves a reward, but the only thing they want to reward him with is death. The stakes increase until an all-out war ensues.There's virtually no story in this film, just one big set-piece after another. Gianfranco Parolini handles the whole thing with aplomb, and the action is perfectly shot. Alongside Van Cleef, we get William Berger as a mysterious guitar-playing drifter, and Nick Jordan playing the amusingly acrobatic Indio. Franco Ressel makes for a delightfully slimy villain and overall there's little to dislike here; it's just an action-packed western that delivers everything you'd hope for.

The ultra-cool Lee Van Cleef stars as the title character, Sabata, an enigmatic gunslinger dressed all in black. He rides into a Texas town where he gets involved with bank robbers, corrupt businessmen, and a banjo player he has history with. Stylish and fun Spaghetti Western. It may not be up to the work of Leone or Corbucci but it's still a good one. Van Cleef is awesome, as always. He's one of those actors whose screen presence is so great I would watch him read the phone book. William Berger, Ignazio Spalla, and Aldo Canti are all fun. Franco Ressel plays the bad guy and looks like a cross between Buster Keaton and Conrad Bain. Great soundtrack from Marcello Giombini. There were two more Sabata films after this that weren't bad but not as good as this one. Van Cleef returns for the third one but is replaced by Yul Brynner in the second.

Lee Van Cleef made his Spaghetti Western name under Sergio Leone in 1965 with a role in the masterpiece For a Few Dollars More, and a follow up as the villain in The Good, The Bad and The Ugly. However, he was only a co-star in those films; whereas Sabata gave him the chance to take the lead...and the result is rather disappointing. Not because of Van Cleef's performance, which is imposing and memorable as always - the problems with this film are more down to the lukewarm plot and rather boring execution. The story begins with a bank robbery in which $100,000 is stolen from an army safe; money that was to be used to buy the land for a planned railroad. However, the thieves haven't banked (ho ho) on a man in black named Sabata turning up and foiling the robbery. He gets the money back and returns to town; where he hooks up with his two sidekicks and proceeds to get in the way of other people in town, which results in plenty of gunfights...although a lot of the plot itself is messy and it's not easy to tell what's going on.The messy plot is of course the main problem with the film, and it really does kill the entertainment value of it. Director Gianfranco Parolini must have had an inkling of this as he packs his film with plenty of gunfights, which are kind of entertaining but not enough so to paper over the many cracks created by the messy plot line. The lead character is of course the main draw and Lee Van Cleef leads every scene he's in and successfully portrays the classic Spaghetti Western anti-hero. However, the same positive things can't be said of the supporting characters, which would at best be described as unwelcome distractions and don't fit the film hardly at all. The film runs for about one hundred minutes, and although many of the best westerns are much longer; this runtime also feels overlong and the overall experience of watching this film is generally not a fun one. Overall, Sabata might be of interest to die hard Spaghetti Western fans; but unfortunately it's not one of the best that the genre has to offer and I don't recommend it.