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The Professionals

Directed by Richard Brooks (1966)

Richard Brooks’s The Professionals is a meditation on loyalty and betrayal on the Western frontier. Four soldiers of fortune, each regarded as a specialist in his selected field — an expert marksman and tracker (Wood Strode), an explosives master (Burt Lancaster), a horse handler (Robert Ryan), and one skills in tactics and weaponry (Lee Marvin) — are hired by a wealthy Texas oil baron (Ralph Bellamy) to rescue his beautiful young wife (Claudia Cardinale) who has been kidnapped by a Mexican revolutionary (Jack Palance). As the men cross the brutal terrain, battling ambushes and night raids, their simple mission unravels, splintering the band of mercenaries. 

Shot by Conrad Hall (Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Road to Perdition), the sweeping desert landscape emerges as its own hostile force in this epic panorama against Maurice Jarre’s haunting musical score. The Professionals garnered three Academy Award nominations; two for Richard Brooks (Best Direction and Best Adapted Screenplay) and another for the esteemed Conrad Hall (Best Cinematography). The filmmakers received the same nominations the following year for the true crime classic, In Cold Blood. 

Caudia Cardinale considered The Professionals “ a magnificent film”, “the best I have done in Hollywood”. Of the actress, who passed away recently, Conrad Hall said: “She is a cameraman’s dream – a perfect piece of Nature- and there is not much you can do wrong in photographing her”. 

Restored in 4K by Sony Pictures Entertainment.  Restored from the 35mm Original Picture Negative. 4K scanning and digital image restoration by Cineric, Inc., New York. Audio restoration by Deluxe Audio services and Chace Audio, sourced from the original 35mm LCR stereo soundtrack masters. Color grading, conforming, additional image restoration and 4K DCP completed at Motion Picture Imaging with senior colorist Sheri Eisenberg. Restoration supervised by Grover Crisp.

Courtesy of Sony Pictures Entertainment