Richard Brooks‘ The Professionals (’66) deepens and souls-up during the final half-hour, agreed, and the only elements that don’t quite work, due respect, are the flagrantly inauthentic, un-Mexican Jack Palance and Claudia Cardinale. Good performances but there’s no believing them deep down.
Brooks, who adapted the script from “A Mule for the Marquesa”, gave Lee Marvin a difficult first-act line. Regarding an old photo of Marvin’s Henry “Rico” Fardan, Ralph Bellamy‘s J.W. Grant says “your hair was darker then.” On the page Marvin’s reply — “My heart was lighter then” — sounds too pat, too written. But Marvin makes it work by muttering the line in a semi-embarassed, self-amused way. This is where good acting and good directing come into play.