Who Finds a Friend Finds a Treasure (1981)

By 1981 the partnership of Terence Hill and Bud Spencer had settled into a comfortable rhythm: two large men, one boat, an island, and a great many punches. Who Finds a Friend Finds a Treasure follows a gambler fleeing his creditors and an actor promoting a terrible brand of jam, both of whom wash up on a Pacific island that turns out to be inhabited, periodically raided by pirates, and guarded by a Japanese holdout who never received the news that the war ended. Sergio Corbucci directs with the efficient indifference of a man completing a contract.

The islanders are played by performers with native names, which lends the production a faint sheen of authenticity, though the film's interest in them extends only as far as their usefulness as people to be rescued. Pirates capture them for the slave trade, a device that exists so the heroes have someone to avenge with their fists. No argument is made about empire, extraction, or the price of the Pacific. The Japanese soldier is pure farce, a man in a bunker still fighting a concluded war, and the humor rests on his stubbornness, not on any reconsideration of history. Louise Bennett appears as Mama, a maternal figure with a handful of lines, and the film's emotional register begins and ends with male friendship and knuckles.

Bud Spencer's bulk functions as a comic weapon, a body built for throwing men through walls, and the screenplay has no thoughts about it beyond that. There is no romance, no sermon, no lesson, no closing plea to the audience. The heroes end up broke, working as museum janitors, having handed a priceless idol to an institution. If that reads as commentary on anything, it is accidental, and the movie is too busy throwing haymakers to notice. A cultural artifact of the lowest possible ambition, executed with genuine craft.