SummaryAn arrogant Texas millionaire hires four adventurers to rescue his kidnapped wife from a notorious Mexican bandit.
Directed By:Richard Brooks
Written By:Frank O'Rourke, Richard Brooks
The Professionals
Metascore
Generally Favorable
75
User score
Generally Favorable
7.0
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Top Cast
Metascore
Generally Favorable
75
78% Positive
7 Reviews
7 Reviews
22% Mixed
2 Reviews
2 Reviews
0% Negative
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
89
Wonderful but improbable tale about a group of mercenaries sent to Mexico to rescue their employer's wife from bad man Jack Palance.
88
Exciting, beautifully shot '60s political western. [10 Apr 1998, p.M]
80
There's something to be said for this kind of professionalism: the moviemakers know how to provide excitement and they work us over.
75
A truly adventuresome, action-filled film that is played more for thrills than for conveying a story, The Professionals offers a field day for Lancaster, Ryan, Marvin, and Strode.
75
This 1966 film was eclipsed in many people's minds by The Wild Bunch three years later, but it's a good, solid job, and with Burt Lancaster, Lee Marvin, Robert Ryan, and Woody Strode, how could you miss?
60
Brooks could certainly write a line and direct action, but his taut and disillusioned yarn of American mercenaries intruding into the Mexican revolution to "rescue" Cardinale had only a couple of years in critical favour before it was comprehensively eclipsed by Peckinpah's ostensibly similar The Wild Bunch.
50
The scenery provided for this picture is clearly more profound than the script, and the sense of magnitude in the environment more engrossing than that in the plot.
User score
Generally Favorable
7.0
75% Positive
9 Ratings
9 Ratings
25% Mixed
3 Ratings
3 Ratings
0% Negative
0 Ratings
0 Ratings
Sep 2, 2023
7
This Western about mercenaries finding their moral code, is surprising, exciting, and well performed. Movie features tons of pumped up action involving dynamite, bow and arrows, machine guns, and Claudia Cardinale's heaving bosom. The four big stars are great, but the filmmakers somehow don't give Robert Ryan much to do. And the last half hour turns into The Burt Lancaster Show.
