Review of Heads or Tails?, the new western by Alessio Rigo de Righi and Matteo Zoppis with Alessandro Borghi, Nadia Tereszkiewicz and John C. Reilly: the pair of directors returns to tell us stories set in rural Italy with a folk western starring great actors of world cinema
CINEFCTS
by Jacopo Gramegna
October 6, 2025
Introduction: money, hope and the return of the western
"Heads or tails?"
It is a question that, as the latest work by Alessio Rigo de Righi and Matteo Zoppis teaches, contains hope: all that matters, once it has been pronounced, are our desires when the coin is in flight.
The coin toss in this case concerns hopes for the return
of the great Italian western, a container in which Italian stars, American
giants and international faces can naturally confront and converge.
In the same way, Heads or Tails?, which transforms its
very essence into its own title, also contains in itself the desire for
affirmation of two excellent Italian storytellers, capable of seamlessly
blending authorship and genre storytelling: an ambitious project of national
interest.
It is no coincidence that Rai Cinema also concerted the production effort, which also took over the distribution through 01 Distribution.
From myth to history: the challenge between Buffalo Bill and the Italian cowboys
In Heads or Tails? However, everything starts - even before hope - from its immediately preceding moment: the bet.
The one really disputed between Buffalo Bill Cody and the
Italian Onorato Caetani.
The two had decided to challenge each other on the most congenial level for both: a challenge between horse tamers, between American cowboys and Italian cowboys.
In the challenge, held on March 8, 1890, the Italians led by Augusto Imperiali, a cowboy of the Caetani family, won in the great general surprise. The event also had great prominence in the Italian press, so much so that it ended up in Il Manifesto of 10 March 1890 and made Augustarello, so nicknamed, an authentic city hero in his Cisterna di Latina.
Alessio Rigo de Righi and Matteo Zoppis deform the historical fact, which in popular tradition has almost taken on the contours of legend, changing the names of the characters and the developments following the defeat of Buffalo Bill: to challenge him, in the fictional narrative, was the Italian squire Ercole Rupè.
His intent, however, was to rig the challenge by betting on his defeat: the obstinacy of the cowboy Santino, played by a playful Alessandro Borghi, and the desire for freedom of his young wife Rosa, an increasingly convincing Nadia Tereszkiewicz, will prevent his plans from ending, triggering the escape of the two.
[Is John C. Reilly an adorable Buffalo Bill in Heads or Tails?]
The reinvention of myth: authorship, legend and fiction
At this point in the narrative, hope comes into play: that of Rosa, who despite her very humble origins dreams of being free and loving, but also that, at first implicit, of Santino to become a hero.
Even the hypothetical coin toss between Buffalo Bill and Ercole Rupè is therefore followed with ineffable naturalness by the bet and hope.
But perhaps, on closer inspection, the story that follows is also distorted, as much as the original bet.
To tell the whole story at the center of Heads or tails? it is in fact Buffalo Bill himself, played by an excellent John C. Reilly, who writes it in full in his diary, which then ended up in Rosa's hands.
Drawing on a true story, then distorted by popular fiction and then imprinted in the diary of their version of Buffalo Bill, Rigo de Righi and Zoppis create a ramshackle but irresistible abyss in which the boundaries of reality blur as well as the rules of verisimilitude.
[The aesthetic of Heads or Tails? is decidedly more swampy than that of a classic western]
Direction, photography and visual identity of Heads or tails?
If in the opening of Heads or tails? the mind can only run to Robert Altman's complex Buffalo Bill and the Indians, for the controversial representation of a Bill Cody increasingly crushed by the conflicts and contradictions of his relationship with the Native Americans and with the spectacularization of violence, the film later re-embraces the taste for folklore and stories of oral tradition always shown by the two filmmakers since the time of Il solengo and the following, in my opinion magnificent, King Crab, of which this work gradually rediscovers the mythical features.
The screenplay written by the two directors with Carlo Salsa, while deviating significantly in terms of visual and narrative suggestions from the classic western, retains the natural tension to travel and some of the natural junctions.
The work of the always talented Simone D'Arcangelo - a true prodigy among young Italian cinematographers, already capable of great international collaborations such as the one with Felipe Gálvez Haberle in Los Colonos - is masterful in this respect: the construction of a western aesthetic consistent with the Italian countryside and heights that also leaves glimmers of the surreal inventions of the authors is perfectly organic.
Heads or tails? it also seems to reintroduce into the Italian production system the ability to attract great Italian and American actors and an international cast: a logic that Quentin Tarantino in Once Upon a Time in... Hollywood has defined "Tower of Babel", due to the difficulty of bringing the dubbing back to a unitary nature, but which has made the Spaghetti Western genre great.
In this perspective, the performance of Peter Lanzani, a well-known name in Argentine cinema, should also be emphasized, who lends himself to a tasty secondary role just as great actors such as Klaus Kinski or Fernando Rey would have done in the 60s.
[In Heads or tails? the hand of DoP Simone D'Arcangelo is fully recognizable]
The cast: Alessandro Borghi, Nadia Tereszkiewicz and John C. Reilly
The actors' interpretations are all entirely based on the deconstruction of masculinity with which the genre of reference is usually imbued.
Alessandro Borghi said he played a stupid man as basically all males can be on certain occasions, but it is the mixture of the character's lack of acumen and bonhomie that makes his Santino one of the most interesting roles of his career.
Even Buffalo Bill himself, the rebel revolutionary, Ercole Rupè and his father are all truncated characters, who lack the skills to grasp the real capacity for action and thought of the real heroine of the opera, Rosa, a character who will certainly make fans of the genre smile, orphans of Claudia Cardinale and her exceptional Jill McBain of Once Upon a Time in the West, a role to which the minds of all those who come across a woman capable of determining the fate of a western story run.
How can Heads or tails certainly appear evident to you? He tries to condense many ambitions into a single operation. A complex intent, pursued with obstinacy, despite the obvious difficulties that characterize it.
[Heads or tails? is not without romantic turns, among the thousand directions of its path]
Heads or tails? and the rebirth of the Italian western
Heads or tails? It answers, ultimately and once and for all, a question that is all too much in vogue in Italian criticism: is it possible to make a completely local western, shaped by our territory and moving from our historical events?
The answer, of course, is fully affirmative.
The bet has therefore been won, thanks to two authors who are not afraid to confront genres by making them their own and making them close to Italian viewers.
Has a new trend really been born in our cinema?
Testa o croce – Italian title
Heads or Tails? – U.S.A. title
Pile ou face – French title
Heads or Tails? – German title
A 2024 Italian, U.S.A. film co-production [Ring Film, Rai
Cinema, Andromeda,
Cinemaundici,
Andromeda Film, Cinemaundici in collaboration with Volos Film
Italia.
(Rome), Cinema Inutile (New York)]
Producers: Tommaso Bertani, Alex C. Lo, Filippo Montalto,
Paolo Del Brocco,
Olivia Musini,
Stefano Centini, Massimiliano Navarra, Filippo Montalto, Francesco
Montaltom,
Agustina Costa Varsi, Giacomo Lamborizio
Directors: Alessio Rigo de Righi, Matteo Zoppis
Story: Matteo Zoppis, Carlo Salsa, Alessio Rigo de Righi,
Tommaso Bertani
Screenplay: Matteo Zoppis, Carlo Salsa, Alessio Rigo de
Righi, Mariana Chaud
Cinematography: Simone D'Arcangelo [color]
Music: Vittorio Giampietro
Running time: 116 minutes
Story: Inspired by real events, this story chronicles
Buffalo Bill's ambitious endeavor to bring his wild west extravaganza to the
Italian public. In post-unification Italy, two young lovers go on the run after
the murder of her husband. Everyone is on their trail, but no one knows the
truth.
Cast:
Buffalo Bill – John C. Reilly
Santino - Alessandro Borghi
Rosa - Nadia Tereszkiewicz
Rebel leader - Peter Lanzani
Ercole Rupè - Mirko Artuso
Zecchino - Gabriele Silli
Signor Rupè - Gianni Garko (Giovanni Garcovich)
Stunt coordinators: Diego Guerra, Bruno Verdirosi, Simone
Bonelli
Stunts: Matteo Angelucci, Matteo Bastianini, Giorgio
Bloemendal, Rocco Maria Franco, Emanuele Freddo, Stefano Scardetta, Luis Pan
Venezia, Vittorio Verdirosi
Trailer link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Z0B-2_nglk
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