Chris Haskell
While not exactly the same plot as True Grit, it is definitely in the same vein, but this time with slapstick humor interjected throughout. Bud Spencer chops his opponents into submission and Jack Palance goes from goon to goof as the story unfolds. This has all the parts of a Spaghetti Western: Decent theme song, genre character actors, settings, etc. but winds up a few feet wide of the mark. The humor is decent, especially some of the interactions with Coburn and the boy, and it is an entertaining movie, but I never really warmed up to the gentle giant Coburn (Bud Spencer) and believed his connection with the kid. And I feel like I just have to at least mention the awkward spousal abuse ending ... I guess it was just being historically accurate? Anyways, there are better Western All'Italiana.Rating: 18/40
Charles Delacroix
I got this movie in a DVD-pack of 24 (cheap) Westerns, mostly spaghetti westerns like this one. And although for the most part I thought this was poor even by spaghetti western standards, I was really delighted by the Hiram Coburn character as played by Bud Spencer.Spencer is new to me, but after seeing this flick and reading the other comments I think I'll just have to go out and find Call Me Trinity or one of the Trinity flicks. My own take on Bud Spencer's character in this movie (Can Be Done Amigo) is pretty much a match for that outlined in the other comments. I just want to add that I was just delighted by this character.Of course spaghetti westerns, and westerns indeed, are full of strange and oddly appealing characters. But this Coburn character is a knew one to me.Laid back, cool, looking down at the ground and grunting softly whenever someone says something to which he takes exception ... then quietly putting on his wire-rimmed spectacles any time he is going to pound someone ... is really appealing to me for some reason. He's a big bear of a man. He wears no guns, but his fists pound all opposition into the ground - or through the nearest window or door or the like. I only would have liked Coburn to put on his glasses just before the final strangely funny and strangely appealing fight scene. I got a feeling of a cross between Seven Brides for Seven Brothers and Laurel & Hardy and The Three Stooges and even Batman ... the early series of Batman with loud reports every time a fist hit anyone. "Bam!" "Pow!" you remember. well, same here, except there's no visual aid, just the loud sound of "bam." All in all, I really liked this gem of a characterization in this movie. Guess I'll have to find Call me Trinity ... ! Charles Delacroix
Steve Nyland (Squonkamatic)
I must admit to being relatively new to the whole Bud Spencer/Terence Fisher thing, but I've already found myself a personal favorite movie in the stack. This infectious, dopey, quasi-surreal Spaghetti Western/comedy, tailor-written for Bud Spencer, then at the height of his post TRINITY glory.Like a good Simpson's episode, IT CAN BE DONE AMIGO's plot defies verbal description: A shambling, lummox like behemoth of a scoundrel (Spencer, standing about 6'4" and weighing 300lbs easy) finds himself going from two bit horse thief to community hero, in spite of his best efforts to avoid otherwise. He is also avoiding Jack Palance, comically over the top as a super-slick Pistolero who will see his "disgraced" sister married to the lummox, or else. Palance is traveling the west with his group of showgirls that he promotes in the most ridiculous looking coach I have ever seen in a Western, and at one point suffers a bout of whiplash that renders him bent over like a pretzel for about a quarter of the film. There are additional intrigues about a young boy traveling to his fostered parent's homestead with an uncle, who turns out to be dead but still entrusts the tyke to Spencer anyway. With much grumbling and gruff muttering, Spencer slowly becomes a father figure, the kid decides that Palance's sister would make a good mother figure, and even plots by local desperadoes won't stop this rolling boulder of humanity once it gets going.And also like a good Simspon's episode, what the film does is to present us with a small community of memorable, likable, amusing cartoon characters who inhabit a very real world made up of what appear to be sets left over from ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST, but now somewhat run down and falling apart. The whole film has a sort of ramshackle, on-the-fly look to it that is very endearing, having the appearance of a typical Western, but being a whole heck of a lot more. Even the meanies in the movie have very human qualities, like the identical twin mustachioed gunfighters (one is left handed, the other right), the weaselly Desperado that Spencer cons out of a turkey dinner in the film's beguiling opening section (the look on Spencer's face after having a bottle broken over his head is priceless: "Not again ..."), and especially Jack Palance, who has never been better as he chomps on a cigarillo and intones "You're gonna marry my seester".Then there is the wandering geologist who pays people to eat some of their dirt (he's looking for oil), Spencer's highly intelligent and communicative horse (who is asked for and gives advice on a few occasions), the bumbling gang of Pistoleros who keep trying to do Spencer in and keep paying for it, and the pretty, busty, blond woman who only wants to marry Spencer, whom she has a love/hate relationship with that is especially amusing when they discuss his eating habits ("I eat like a hog 'cos that's the way I like it."). The effect that this otherwise dainty, attractive young woman has upon the huge, gentle Spencer is the film's best joke, because he only wants to eat, ride, talk with his horse, and not have any responsibilities.Don't we all, though? The movie IS Spencer's, and was either written specifically for him OR was the role he was born to play, probably a bit of both. One of the alternate titles for the film is THE BULLDOZER RETURNS, AMIGO and is very telling of his Hiram Coburn. He doesn't wear a gun, and doesn't need to. He is big, strong, fast, and outsmarts people as much as pounding them into the ground like telephone poles. One of the interesting quirks given to his character is that Spencer puts on a pair of Ben Franklin wire rim glasses just before he starts swinging the beef, and my favorite moment from the film is when one of the bad guys tries three swift punches to his bread box that have the effect of punching the Hoover Dam. It's hilarious ...But to use the analogy one more time because it's so fitting, just like a good Simpson's episode, you have to see it for yourself to understand the magic that this stupid, funny, quirky little movie has going on. And you can: Look for a DVD Box Set by the nefarious Treeline Films obnoxiously called FIFTY WESTERN CLASSICS with 50 fullframe PDM Westerns on twelve double sided DVDs, each enclosed it it's own cardboard drink coaster. The print used was a dingy, fullframe formatted TV print, but it's utterly hilarious, addictively watchable, somewhat thought provoking, and proves once again that the best movies are always the ones that tell stories about people. Perhaps Mr. Lucas should have given this a looksee while making up his last STAR WARS movie, which was about action figures and computer games and making money. And as a result, it sucked. IT CAN BE DONE AMIGO was shot on a budget of probably less than $100,000 in even today's money, and is a far superior entertainment that actually has a soul. Imagine that.I give this one unusually high marks: Nine out of ten, and recommend it to anyone planning to put relics of humanity into a satellite to be launched in the direction of the galaxy Andromeda as an example of what we were capable of.