Two Mules for Sister Sara

The erstwhile 'Man With No Name' from the Sergio Leone spaghetti westerns does have a name (Hogan) in this 1969 Don Siegel serio-comic cowboy pic, but Clint Eastwood is still playing a variation on the self-interested anti-hero he established in A Fistful of Dollars and its two sequels. After saving Sister Sara (Shirley MacLaine) from a gang rape, Hogan lets her come along on his hired mission to help a band of Mexican guerrillas destroy a French fort. Despite much coyly humorous badinage between the two, their grudging alliance is mostly a marriage of convenience (she's an idealist for the Mexican cause; he's just in it for the bounty). Eventually, the nun jokes get old, and this slackly paced film ultimately leads up to an unsurprising revelation about Sara's real occupation, followed by a rather unspectacular shoot-'em-up finale. The widescreen image is generally defect-free, though hardly perfect; still, it's a huge improvement over the horribly panned-and-scanned prints usually shown--exemplified here on a cropped trailer, the disc's sole bonus feature. Definitely optional. (T. Rich)