Two Mules For Sister Sara

Clint Eastwood and Shirley MacLaine star in this classic western directed by Don Siegel. After turning up in French controlled New Mexico in the hope of making a quick buck, gunslinger Hogan (Eastwood) shows his fundamentally noble nature by saving the helpless Sara (MacLaine) from being raped by a gang of unruly bandits. Although shocked to find that Sara is in fact a prostitute, the unlikely couple agree to team up with Mexican revolutionaries in an attempt to take control of the French garrison nearby and claim their share of the camp’s many riches.From Amazon.co.uk
In the cactus-studded Mexican backcountry of the 1860s, a surly drifter who could easily be mistaken for the Man with No Name becomes protector and lethal helpmate to a red-haired nun wanted by the French for aiding the Juarista revolutionaries. Essentially a two-character showcase for the newly stellar Clint Eastwood and what was beginning to seem the poststellar Shirley MacLaine (subbing for Elizabeth Taylor), this sardonic study in testy collaboration, mutual deception and distrust, and slightly creepy sexual attraction is highly rated by a fairly small number of critics–chiefly, one suspects, for the dual-auteur cachet of having been directed by Don Siegel and based on a story by Budd Boetticher. Others deem it an undersauced spaghetti Western and find that the stars grate on the viewer as well as each other. Cinematography by the great Gabriel Figueroa is some consolation, but… if only Boetticher had been allowed to direct. –Richard T. Jameson