Two Mules For Sister Sara

Don Siegel's film adapted by Albert Maltz from a story by Western director Budd Boetticher is, if not an outright comedy Western, then a light-hearted exercise in the genre that plays with Clint Eastwood’s Man With No Name persona including a score by Ennio Morricone.

Here with half a name, Eastwood is a cigar-munchin’, dynamite tossin’ mercenary named Hogan who’s on his way to Mexico to help the Jauristas blow up a French fort and steal its treasury. On the way he encounters Sister Sara (Shirley MacLaine) and rescues her from a trio of low lives about to rape her.  He saves her with typical summary justice but then finds that she is on the run from the French for collaborating with the Mexicans. They team up and blah, blah…

Two Mules for Sister Sara is intended as a disposable entertainment and that is exactly what it is (with a good deal of questionability regarding the entertainment side of things) with the peppery relationship between Eastwood and MacLaine the main attraction. The plot is largely immaterial as, much more so than Hogan we know where all this is going (since when do nuns wear false eyelashes?) and the issue is only how enjoyable is the ride. Only so much would be most people's answer. 

If you want to see this sort of thing done well check out Robert Altman’s McCabe and Mrs Miller which was released the following year

 

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