‘Heads Or Tails?’ review: John C. Reilly is Buffalo Bill in this ‘rambunctious’ spaghetti Western

Dir: Alessio Rigo de Righi, Matteo Zoppis. Italy/USA. 2025. 107mins

Within the late nineteenth century, American showman ‘Buffalo Invoice’ Cody (John C. Reilly, bewhiskered and brash) is touring Italy along with his Wild West present. A wager which pits Invoice’s cowboys in opposition to the native Italian equal, the cattle-herding ‘butteri’, leads to a win for the house facet, and the homicide of a nobleman. His impulsive younger widow Rosa (rising French star Nadia Tereszkiewicz, Endlessly Younger) flees the scene with Santino (Alessandro Borghi), the triumphant Italian cowboy now suspected of homicide and kidnapping. Buffalo Invoice is in sizzling pursuit, hoping for a brand new story so as to add to his repertoire. This enjoyably rambunctious spaghetti Western suggestions its outlaw lovers right into a nascent Italian class struggle, earlier than taking a decidedly surreal swerve into fantasy.

Rigo de Righi and Zoppis weave a story that will get taller by the minute 

Bowing in Un Sure Regard, Heads Or Tails? represents a definite change of tone for administrators Alessio Rigo de Righi and Matteo Zoppis following their experimental documentary-drama hybrid, The Story Of King Crab, which additionally premiered at Cannes in 2021 and went on to assert a wholesome haul of prizes at additional festivals. Whereas this follow-up is a probably extra business providing, with its interesting forged and vivid, full-blooded strategy, in some methods it builds upon related themes to these explored within the earlier image. Each are rooted in a fascination with the act of storytelling, oral histories and mythologies.

Whereas King Crab takes as its leaping off level the campfire tales of a bunch of aged Italian hunters, Heads Or Tails? follows a narrative as it’s written: Buffalo Invoice travels with a private scribe, whose job it’s to notice down Invoice’s each florid phrase. And the movie is split into 4 chapters, every with a flowery title card. However Invoice has met his match in feisty Rosa, who is set to take management of her personal story.

Shot on movie, the image’s saturated color palette makes essentially the most of each splatter of spilled blood and each wanton, come-hither Italian sundown (the story unfolds in opposition to the placing landscapes of Lazio and Tuscany). It additionally handsomely showcases the honeyed complexion of Rosa, and the crystalline Mediterranean blue of her cowboy lover’s eyes. They’re an exceptionally charismatic pair. And whereas there are many bounty hunters who would promote them out for the 1000 golden scudi supplied by Rosa’s father-in-law as a reward, loads of others see Santino as a hero and the face of the rising revolt.

A easy man, Santino lets his newfound standing go to his good-looking, empty head, performing a rousing, self-aggrandising tune to roars of approval from the insurgent forces – folk-songs, in addition to Invoice’s narration, are used as a storytelling gadget all through.

A army ambush makes brief shrift of the peasant revolt, and is adopted by the type of betrayal that you just would possibly anticipate in a movie populated by disreputable characters with names like 24 Carat (for his quite a few gold tooth) and 30 Vices. The violence of the betrayal threatens to half the outlaw lovers completely. But it surely’s right here that the image shifts, from a grubby Leone-inspired Western to one thing altogether odder and extra fantastical, leading to a tonal mix of Matteo Garrone’s Story Of Tales and The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada by Tommy Lee Jones.

Rigo de Righi and Zoppis weave a story that will get taller by the minute (though the inspiration for the movie comes from an actual occasion throughout Buffalo Invoice Cody’s tour of Italy). They usually have created a movie that finds its magic in its poetic visible segues and digressions. A scene wherein Rosa, seemingly deserted by Santino, stumbles throughout a band of itinerant frog hunters geared up with mirrors to replicate the solar is uncanny, sudden and hauntingly beautiful.