This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 11th, 2007 at 4:42 pm and is filed under Action, G, Western. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
strong>Director: Sergio Leone
Starring: Clint Eastwood, Eli Wallach, Lee Van Cleef
This was one of the last Spaghetti Westerns and it was by far the best. Great characters, superior dialogue, improved acting and a better story than previous Leone/Eastwood collaborations make this one of the best westerns of all time and certainly one of the ultimate ‘guy’ movies. Its haunting theme music is among the most recognizable of any movie score.
Clint Eastwood is Blondie (‘The Good), a smart, slick, gunslinger of few words who is pretty much the same as his character in the previous Italian westerns. Tuco (The Ugly), Blondie’s partner/enemy/friend/etc., is the best written part in the movie and is played masterfully by Eli Wallach, bringing ample humour and personality to the project, while still keeping the movie’s edge. Lee Van Cleef plays Angel Eyes (The Bad), who is a sinister, calculating killer. These three men are competing for some hidden gold while trying to avoid becoming fatally entangled in the civil war all around them. There are great battle scenes, some surprising gentle, and subtle, comments about war and the usual gunslinging of 60s Eastwood flicks.
All of us with a creative heart want, at some point, to master our craft and leave something behind that represents what we can do, what we have learned and what we want to say. Sergio Leone did just that with this movie, when his previous successes in low budget efforts, allowed him the opportunity to make the movie he wanted to. It is a fantastic effort, and rare indeed is the western that can measure up to it.
