For a Few Dollars More

The second film in the trilogy is a nice intermediary in terms of length, epicness, and major supporting cast. Gian Maria Volontè returns as a villain once more, Lee Van Cleef is an ally of the nameless man before he'd be a foe in the sequel, and Clint Eastwood is yet again the hardened man with no name. Interestingly, the protagonist here is supposedly not the same person as the one in the previous movie, or at least that's what Sergio Leone claimed and convinced the courts after he had a falling out with that movie's producer and he sued for whatever rights were involved with the character. It doesn't really need to be though, as the character is more of a western archetype than a fully developed person. As usual, the people around him have more involved backgrounds and character development, while he's just there being a bad ass.

The story's about how Eastwood and Cleef, as maybe an older and wiser version of the same character, run into each other as they both pursue the bounty on Volontè and his gang's heads and decide to split the ransom and work together. The friendship isn't exactly a fast one, and they spend almost as much time at odds with each other as they do with the real bad guys. Eastwood spends some time infiltrating the gang and yet again getting caught and having his ass kicked, but eventually they get their shot when the villain, high on drugs and still hung up on events earlier in his life, makes a lot of strange, bad decisions. His eventual downfall is as much his fault as anyone else's. I hope it's not a spoiler that he dies, but if it is... well come on, dude. As is standard with Leone's films, the introductions of the characters and clever final showdown are the best parts, although the middle here might actually be the most enjoyable of the three movies. It doesn't reach the awesome heights of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly's best moments, but it's a solid movie all the way through.

A Fistful of Dollars

Dollars is the first film in Sergio Leone's famous spaghetti western trilogy, and also the shortest. It begins with a stylized, rotoscoped opening credits sequence, which the third film imitated. As with nearly every western I've seen now, the opening and closing scenes are pretty darn cool, but the stuff in the middle drags. Thankfully it doesn't last too long. The whole story is more or less a remake of Akira Kurosawa's Yojimbo, a samurai film which itself borrowed from the same stories by Dashiell Hammett that led to the Coen brothers' Miller's Crossing. So it's the familiar tale of a loner playing two factions against each other to his own benefit, and even rips ideas from Yojimbo wholesale like the hardened killer being unsure of how many coffins the undertaker should make as a result of his introductory exploits.

As a beginning to Leone's work in the genre, it's a nice debut. The fact that he actually lost a lawsuit with Kurosawa that claimed it was a rip-off makes it hard to credit the originality, but it did a nice job of turning it into a natural feeling western. The man with no name character is an intriguing one, because he's not really on the law's side in any real sense, but he still has enough good in him to take it upon himself to rescue an innocent family at the cost of his own capture. He's a nice mix of clever, human, and plain old bad ass that he's fun to watch no matter what he's doing. Gian Maria Volontè is a pretty capable villain, angry but still intelligent, and returns in the next movie as a different character. For being a cheap Italian production, it's a watchable enough representation of something very American.

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

Ugly is the third film in a trilogy by Sergio Leone and starring Clint Eastwood as the "man with no name", and is the biggest budgeted, most epic, and most successful of the bunch. I hadn't seen the first two yet, but I figured it would be okay since it's a prequel set during the Civil War. Quentin Tarantino has called this the best-directed film of all time, and I can see why he might say that. I don't agree, but the movie does a whole hell of a lot right.

The thing about the film is the first fifty minutes and the last twenty are absolutely outstanding; it's just that the hundred minutes in the middle are merely decent. Leone takes the first half hour just to introduce the three leads. Eastwood is "The Good", a protagonist who we root for but never mistake for a particularly good person beyond a few instances of acting nobly. Lee Van Cleef is "The Bad", a hardened killer who's trying to track down a confederate soldier. The sequence that establishes his character is unfortunately the best thing we'll see out of him, but at least it's excellent. And Eli Wallach is "The Ugly", a bandit with constantly fluctuating luck who actually sees the most screen time and character development of the three. He might be the most interesting of the bunch. The first ten minutes or so don't even have dialogue, as Leone shows he can film the hell out of any shootout of showdown you can throw at him. Things eventually bog down once they start marching through the desert, and it's never bad, just the standard western problem of spending too much time not playing to its strengths. There are plenty of good sequences, like when the good and the ugly team up against a group of the bad's thugs, it just drags as a whole. They get to an elaborate scene where union and confederate forces are facing off over a bridge, and it's an impressively large-scale setpiece that I would have liked more if I gave a crap about it.

Eventually though they make it to their intended destination, and we have one of the greatest face-offs in film history. The whole final sequence is a perfect case of the score making the movie better. It might even be better than the direction. Just look at the iconic main theme, using a different instrument for each lead, and which while repeated constantly throughout the film is never once not welcome. "The Ecstasy of Gold" at a moment of great emotional relief is brilliant, and then what plays during the duel is some of the best tension-building music I've ever heard in a film. Clint is almost too badass to live in the last scene and the climax is really just about perfect for the movie. Really, the only thing that dragged the movie down besides the length was the dubbing. The movie was shot silently with a multilingual cast and every line had to be dubbed over. Most of the supporting cast were speaking Spanish or Italian and when you watch them talk it's just hard to take the movie completely seriously. The three leads all spoke English but were still often hit-or-miss with their delivery. I mean, how hard is it to figure out that you might sound different if there's a cigar or wine cork in your mouth? Three hours was too long for this story, but I enjoyed it quite a bit for the most part.