‘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

In the late 19th century, American showman ‘Buffalo Bill’ Cody (John C. Reilly, bewhiskered and brash) is touring Italy with his Wild West show. A bet which pits Bill’s cowboys against the native Italian equivalent, the cattle-herding ‘butteri’, results in a win for the home side, and the murder of a nobleman. His impulsive young widow Rosa (rising French star Nadia Tereszkiewicz, Forever Young) flees the scene with Santino (Alessandro Borghi), the triumphant Italian cowboy now suspected of murder and kidnapping. Buffalo Bill is in hot pursuit, hoping for a new story to add to his repertoire. This enjoyably rambunctious spaghetti Western tips its outlaw lovers into a nascent Italian class war, before taking a decidedly surreal swerve into fantasy.

Rigo de Righi and Zoppis weave a tale that gets taller by the minute 

Bowing in Un Certain Regard, Heads Or Tails? represents a distinct change of tone for directors Alessio Rigo de Righi and Matteo Zoppis following their experimental documentary-drama hybrid, The Tale Of King Crab, which also premiered at Cannes in 2021 and went on to claim a healthy haul of prizes at further festivals. While this follow-up is a potentially more commercial offering, with its appealing cast and vivid, full-blooded approach, in some ways it builds upon similar themes to those explored in the previous picture. Both are rooted in a fascination with the act of storytelling, oral histories and mythologies.

While King Crab takes as its jumping off point the campfire stories of a group of elderly Italian hunters, Heads Or Tails? follows a story as it is written: Buffalo Bill travels with a personal scribe, whose job it is to note down Bill’s every florid word. And the film is divided into four chapters, each with a flowery title card. But Bill has met his match in feisty Rosa, who is determined to take control of her own story.

Shot on film, the picture’s saturated colour palette makes the most of every splatter of spilled blood and every wanton, come-hither Italian sunset (the story unfolds against the striking landscapes of Lazio and Tuscany). It also handsomely showcases the honeyed complexion of Rosa, and the crystalline Mediterranean blue of her cowboy lover’s eyes. They are an exceptionally charismatic pair. And while there are plenty of bounty hunters who would sell them out for the 1000 golden scudi offered by Rosa’s father-in-law as a reward, plenty of others see Santino as a hero and the face of the rising rebellion.

A simple man, Santino lets his newfound status go to his handsome, empty head, performing a rousing, self-aggrandising song to roars of approval from the rebel forces – folk-songs, as well as Bill’s narration, are used as a storytelling device throughout.

A military ambush makes short shrift of the peasant rebellion, and is followed by the kind of betrayal that you might expect in a film populated by disreputable characters with names like 24 Carat (for his numerous gold teeth) and 30 Vices. The violence of the betrayal threatens to part the outlaw lovers permanently. But it’s here that the picture shifts, from a grubby Leone-inspired Western to something altogether odder and more fantastical, resulting in a tonal blend of Matteo Garrone’s Tale Of Tales and The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada by Tommy Lee Jones.

Rigo de Righi and Zoppis weave a tale that gets taller by the minute (although the inspiration for the film comes from a real event during Buffalo Bill Cody’s tour of Italy). And they have created a film that finds its magic in its poetic visual segues and digressions. A scene in which Rosa, seemingly abandoned by Santino, stumbles across a band of itinerant frog hunters equipped with mirrors to reflect the sun is uncanny, unexpected and hauntingly lovely.