This lightly engaging if mediocre western is the least substantial of star Clint Eastwood’s several collaborations with the legendary director Don Siegel (together they made The Beguiled, Dirty Harry and Escape from Alcatraz). Still, it is highly watchable in its thrilling, Panavision view of a rugged, untamed Mexican countryside.
Eastwood’s banter with seemingly unlikely co-star Shirley MacLaine is nimble and smartly devised to contrast his self-interested bluntness with her saintly sophistication. Eastwood plays Hogan, a soldier-turned-mercenary who, while riding on his horse through a hilly landscape, comes across an imminent assault by three men of a near-naked woman. Hogan kills the men, then discovers the woman is a nun named Sister Sara.
After unsuccessfully trying to shake her off, Hogan finds Sister Sara attached to him during his travels, slowing him down and forcing him to accommodate her Catholic values and altruism. But, in fact, they have something in common: they are both supporting the Mexican army’s war against French colonizing forces. She, however, is doing it for the cause, while he has been promised a large cache of French riches.
The film combines the influences of two John Huston classics, The African Queen (pairing Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn) and Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison (Robert Mitchum and Deborah Kerr, the latter playing a nun). Two Mules for Sister Sara grows stale as the action opens up in the final act and guns are blazing. The film is much more fun when it’s just Eastwood and MacLaine (both of them very good) on screen, their characters trying to figure out their obligations to one another as well as their strange relationship. Lightly recommended.