User reviews

This is a nice troika of films each of them is screening of some story by O'Henry. All movies were made with humor and what is also important with great respect for the source. But i want particularly dwell on the first movie,'The Roads We Take'. I think that many cinematographic discoveries and means were used in this movie two years before they were shown in Sergio Leone first movie of his famous trilogy. Close-ups, black humor, unusual perspectives -- 'The Roads We Take' is very innovative in this sense. In my opinion this movie is a genuine masterpiece, Gaidai foresaw many things which then used and developed by Leone. i rate this trilogy or troika as i called it above by 9,5 Such a shame that this masterpiece is not well-known in the West.

I remember back when I was a kid I saw a little snippet of the last segment of this movie and I was stunned that Russian actors were playing American characters but somehow with all my love towards cinema and everything American I hadn't got time to watch it in whole until now.

'Strictly business' is divided into three parts, all being almost accurate retellings of O. Henry's short stories, with the last taking more than 60% of the whole movie's runtime. Leonid Gaidai was a genius when it came to making films but this one is very uneven, and not because of its imperfect percentage of each segment but because it deals with many topics not related to each other in the context of one movie - he had done short features before that and probably should have done the same here, simply dividing the parts into individual movies - the thing he later improved when he made 'Operation 'Y' and another adventures of Shurik' (1965).

Overall this is a fine collection of stories, with the first being the most dramatic, with the western vibe to it and if I didn't know it was made by Russians I really couldn't tell the difference; the second was the most obscure choice in my opinion to tell on screen but the most ironic of them all, and the third went over the top with its gimmicks and slapstick, combining comedy, western and a bit of a Dennis the Menace type of character who can literally drive anybody up the wall, well enough to enjoy it thoroughly.

Solid performances through and through, great landscapes and unconventional choices for music score and sound effects are the movie's highlights and I think it would've gotten the classic status if I had watched it way back when but to me it just doesn't hold up as strongly as Gaidai's later masterpieces.

The film has three parts, each of them a screen version of "The Roads We Take", "The Ransom of Red Chief" and (sorry, I forget the exact title) a story of a burglar suffering from rheumatism who stumbles into the owner of the house he attempts to rob, and he happens to be a rheumatic, too. The film has an all-star cast. I've never seen anybody better than Vitsin as Sam and Smirnov as Bill, and the kid is simply holy terror, absolutely unrivalled. Though the film is black-and-white, it doesn't spoil the film any. Side-splitting and a real pleasure to watch the actors play.