Texas Justice
When Burt Sullivan (Franco Nero) was just seven his father was murdered and now many years later having become a Texas Sheriff he plans to head to Mexico to settle an old score with his father's killer. Despite wanting his younger brother Jim (Alberto Dell'Acqua) to stay behind the young man won't take no for an answer and tags along with Burt on his quest. When they arrive in a small town Burt quickly discovers that everyone there is afraid of Cisco Delgardo (José Suárez) who controls the town and is the man who Burt has come to arrest and take back to Texas to receive justice. Trouble is there is some thing about Cisco which neither Burt nor Jim knows which complicates matters.
I reckon cinematographers must have loved to work with Franco Nero on the spaghetti westerns of the past as he knew how to deliver a look. With his hat placed slightly at an angle, his eyes slightly squinted and the sun glistening off of his skin, he could emote all manner of emotions without saying a word especially delivering that sense of knowing that if he wanted he could kill who ever he was looking at. It is Franco Nero as Sheriff Burt Sullivan who makes "Texas, Adios" as cinematographer Enzo Barboni time and again capitalizes on Nero's ability to say so much with a look and a movement.
As such when you put to one side what Franco Nero brings to "Texas, Adios" what you have left is a solid but not too unsurprising spaghetti western where we have a man seeking a long held need for justice against the man who killed his father, some thing he witnessed as a child and a town terrified by the same man who controls them through intimidation. Yes we have the fact that with Burt being a lawman wants to get justice legally, taking Cisco back to Texas to face justice but for the most it is routine, right down to the staging of various moments of action and drama. The one difference comes from a revelation surrounding Jim when Burt finally gets to confront Cisco. I won't tell you what that revelation is but it doesn't take much genius to work that out.
What this all boils down to is that "Texas, Adios" is an entertaining but for the most routine revenge western which beyond one mystery combines the town tormented by a landowner with a classic son seeking revenge storyline. But with nice cinematography and Franco Nero it at least grabs you on a visual level.
