“Those willing to look past its tonal roller coaster will discover an entertaining film with commercial potential to be found.”

An anti-hero, a damsel in distress, bounty hunters and shootouts. The only thing missing is a saloon. In their previous feature, The Tale of King Crab, Italian directors Matteo Zoppis and Alessio Rigo de Righi played around with elements of the Western genre, but for their latest, Heads or Tails? (Testa o croce?) they go all in. And not just on the tropes of the genre, but on the cast too, snagging one of Italy’s most sought-after actors in Alessandro Borghi, French rising star Nadia Tereszkiewicz, and American star John C. Reilly in a hefty supporting role as a legend of the American West (and he sings too, of course). Heads or Tails? is a testament to the fact that all of that star wattage doesn’t guarantee a great film, but those looking for a 21st century Italian riff on the genre will be pleased to know that this is more Eastwood and Morricone than Bud Spencer and Terence Hill.

A little-known fact about American legend Buffalo Bill Cody is that he traveled to Italy twice with his Western show. In Heads or Tails? we meet him, portrayed by Reilly, performing his show in front of an upper-class crowd, hosted by railroad tycoon Rupè and his family. After the show the son of the family, Ercole (Mirko Artuso) bets Bill that his Italian cowboys can beat their American counterparts in taming a wild horse. He intends to lose the bet and make a large sum, but his chosen rider Santino (Borghi) has different ideas. This draws the attention of Ercole’s wife Rosa (Tereszkiewicz), who sees herself forced to kill him when he confronts Santino and figures out the romantic tryst between Santino and herself. Forced to go on the run, the pair of lovers find themselves in several hot pickles until Santino loses his life and his head, which Rosa hopes to bring home as proof that she got the killer. But she doesn’t count on the tracking skills of Buffalo Bill.

Casting John C. Reilly in your movie automatically means that a super serious tone is out the window. Especially early on in Heads or Tails? this proves an issue, as he hits a much lighter note than those around him involved in the murder drama. Once Rosa and Santino hit the road and go for a lengthy slog through the swamps of the Po Valley to throw the hounds off their scent, Reilly is out of the picture for a long stretch until he is enlisted by Rupè to track them down. With his return the comedic tone is back in, but by then it is compounded by the severed head of Santino, lugged around by Rosa, suddenly coming to life; which, granted, may only be in Rosa’s head. Borghi and Tereszkiewicz play their roles much straighter, which makes Heads or Tails? tonally incongruent.

This doesn’t diminish the entertainment value though; some would even say it enhances it. And even if Zoppis and Rigo de Righi let their film fly off the handle tonally, their compositional talent and eye for visuals doesn’t suffer from it. Heads or Tails? is a Western through and through, and they establish this with atmospheric sunsets, low-angle (Italian) prairie shots, and the occasional smash zoom, a staple of the much-derided Spaghetti Western subgenre. Much of the film belongs to Tereszkiewicz, the unlikely protagonist of the film, almost unrecognizable with a big set of auburn curls and freckled cheeks. The French actress wisely doesn’t play for the rafters, and her Rosa isn’t the gunslinging tough babe that lesser films would have turned her into. Borghi is as unrecognizable, but his character is more single-note, his only chance to play around coming when the pair find themselves with a band of revolutionaries, led by an Argentinian exile (Peter Lanzani), who plan to overthrow the oligarchs bleeding the country dry. If this was an attempt at political commentary by Zoppis and Rigo de Righi, it falls flat, because the revolutionaries, most of whom are killed in a prolonged shootout with Rupè’s men, become just another episode on Rosa’s journey that inevitably ends in a confrontation with the film’s main antagonist. All things considered, Heads or Tails? is a schizophrenic third effort from Zoppis and Rigo de Righi and a definite step down from The Tale of King Crab, but those willing to look past its tonal roller coaster will discover an entertaining film with commercial potential to be found.