Mannaja
Mannaja also known under the English title A Man Called Blade, USA is an Italian western film from 1977 directed by Sergio Martino. The main role, Blade, is played by Maurizio Merli. Other central roles are played by John Steiner, Sonja Jeannine, Donald OBrien, Philippe Leroy and Martine Brochard.
Bounty hunter Blade Maurizio Merli, who uses a tomahawk as a throwing weapon, arrives at the mining town of Suttonville with the outlaw Burt Craven Donald OBrien as his prisoner. His real motive is to kill mining big boss McGowan Philippe Leroy who has killed his father. Blade gives up his revenge because McGowan is not worth it and instead accepts to deliver the ransom for the mine owners daughter Sonja Jeannine. However, this mission fails because she turns out to be the lover of her kidnapper, McGowans foreman Voller John Steiner, who secretly works for a gang that regularly robs the shipments of silver from the mine. Voller then kills his boss and turns his mining empire into bloody chaos by massacring the mine workers. Blade is beaten up and buried up to his neck and left to be blinded by the sun. However, he survives and returns for a showdown with Voller.In his investigation of narrative structures in Spaghetti Western films, Fridlund ranges Mannaja among stories obeying the Tragic Mercenary plot where the pursuit of a monetary motive entails the killing or wounding of someone close to the hero, who then sets out on a vengeance mission. This story appears in the very influential Django. In the case of Blade his economic arrangement with the man he should have killed sets off a course of action leading to him being tortured and to the death of the showgirl Angela, who loves him. The situation where a kidnapped woman betrays her savior because she is the lover of her wouldbe abductor also appears in Ten Thousand Dollars for a Massacre another Tragic Mercenary story. ........
Source: Wikipedia
