For all the hype it got I was expecting a lot more!

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Castellari made a couple of decent movies, a few really good ones and quite a bit of god awful ones. This is his best. Saw the movie for the first time when I was about 14 on VHS in the 80's and though I thought it was very weird, I liked it. A few years later I saw it again, when I was around 21 and liked it a bit more. Showed it to some other people I knew and saw it again. Then, DVD came. I'm from Europe, but I ordered it from the States. I loved it. Now I saw it recently for the first time on the big screen. I have forgiven it some of the voice-actors and accepted the odd soundtrack. Hell, I even like it at parts. Now I finally see the truth. Keoma is a masterpiece.

Keoma (Franco Nero), a half-Indian half-Caucasian civil war veteran returns to his homeland to find it in squalor and disrepair at the hands of gang leader and presiding landlord Caldwell (Donald O'Brien) and his enforcers; keeping the inhabitants in poverty and cureless from the plague that's going around. Those who do circum are rounded up and dumped at the old mine on the outskirts. It is here that a passing Keoma saves a pregnant woman (Olga Karlatos) – wrongly assumed to be infected – from imminent murder.Keoma is a solid, gripping and mythical western that is incredibly stylish and not entirely without substance either. The only major flaw is the film's overly-insistent and frequently agitating score in the form of a warbling diva and throaty male vocalist taking it in turns to sing what is happening in the film as it happens with some very on-the- nose lyrics: "Now I'm here in front of these men/Gun in hand, I'm waiting for what will be…" and; "There's my father and my brothers and me/Tell me now father, why they hate me so." The instrumental sections fair a lot better providing some effectively cathartic moments.

Not your typical western, not even a typical spaghetti western. This revenge western is more at home in Africa than in America.It is the tale of a town controlled by an evil warlord (Donald O'Brien) and his henchmen. No law, no one to save the citizens. In rides Keoma (or Django as he has been known) to exact revenge. Franco Nero is excellent in his role, and Enzo G. Castellari sometimes mirrors Jadorowski in his approach. I said it wasn't typical.Action is nonstop and there is more fighting and shooting than talking. Always good for a western. As you may expect, it ends with the town finally waking up trying to take back control.

This is one of the great spaghetti westerns. Franco Nero puts in what is perhaps his best performance ever, and it's great to see that his voice is not dubbed by someone else here. This is an action packed, gut wrenching, on the edge of your seat western from start to finish. It also has all the style, symbolism, and violence one could ask for from a spaghetti western, and then some.This film has been criticized for a few different reasons, and I feel compelled to address a couple of those comments. The number one topic for discussion seems to be the soundtrack. Yes the soundtrack is a bit strange, but so is the movie, so in a way it's fitting. Personally, I think it's kind of hit and miss, but it works for the most part. I really like the female vocals. Her voice has a creepy, melancholy, and otherworldly quality to it that matches the film perfectly. The male vocals, on the other hand, sounded like an Italian muppet to me at first. Perhaps the cookie monster. I do have to say though that I just watched the film for the third time and the guy doesn't sound nearly as bad to me as he did the first time. This is a damn good movie anyway, regardless of whether or not one likes the soundtrack.Another criticism I've heard is that Franco Nero plays an Indian with an Italian accent. First of all, this kind of thing is very common in films. Think of all the Romans, Greeks, Martians, etc. that have had English or American accents in the movies. This is no different except that in this movie it actually adds to the characterization of Keoma. He is an outsider, and the fact that his accent is so unique to the setting just adds to the effect.Keoma's flashbacks to his boyhood are extremely well done, and the children they picked to play him and his half-brothers are very realistically matched to their adult counterparts. There are some cool slow-motion action scenes, and the action scenes in general are top-notch. I also like the character of the old woman who seems to have some kind of supernatural link to Keoma. We're never quite sure what her relationship is to him, or even whether she is real or not. The acting from all of the main players is also very well done, and the cinematography is beautiful.This is one of those spaghetti westerns that stands out from the crowd. It's a must-see if you are at all interested in the genre. I would recommend it to anyone who likes westerns, action flicks, or movies that are not made with a cookie-cutter.