The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
For 3 men the Civil War was practice.
The third and final instalment in Sergio Leone’s unofficial Dollars trilogy, (or as some call it Man with No Name trilogy), features Clint Eastwood as the same quiet, humble and heroically tough loner from the previous two films, this time known by the nickname Blondie. In the famous conclusion to the trilogy, set during the American Civil War, Blondie comes across a sly and eccentric bandit named Tuco, (Eli Wallach), who is two steps ahead of the law, finding himself in Blondie’s company as they seek $20,000, hidden by a solider in the desert. As they search they come across Angel Eyes, (Lee Van Cliff), a ruthlessly insane assassin who has a persistent habit of always getting the job done. As he gets on the wrong side of Blondie and Tuco it becomes the battle between the Good, the Bad and the Ugly. (Hence the title of the film).
This is by far the most famous venture in the series and to this day is constantly called one of the best westerns and singularly one of the greatest sequels ever made. Even if you have never seen or heard of this movie, there are so many famous things you can pull from it, the extreme close ups of the three main characters eye’s during the film’s last twenty minutes or the Spanish desert at ‘Sad Hill’ where the iconic last sequence was shot. By contrast if you have seen the film 100 times, it is always tense, climatic and completely unpredictable.
A documentary was made about the filming, quite recently, which focused on the cultural significance of this isolated Spanish wasteland as well as the unexpectedly large fan culture surrounding the production. This focused on the location, the film itself, Eastwood’s incredibly understated performance and Enrico Morricone’s remarkable classical music score, featuring some of the most aspiring and influential music ever composed for the silver screen. There are also dozens of sub-textual themes which are subtly implanted throughout its near 3-hour runtime.
The Good, Bad and Ugly is an extraordinarily directed and beautifully well-crafted western which is by far the best instalment in Leone’s trilogy, although it’s incredible length could have been cut down by a good 40 or 50 minutes. In my estimation this is largely due to a large, bloated and somewhat convoluted sub-plot, where the film steers in one direction for a fair amount of time before making a sudden and bizarre U-turn. The opening sequence is deliberately drawn out to build up the tension from the opening frame, however it is vehemently inconsistent with the rest of the film and shows that that a large chunk of this epic Spaghetti Western is really poorly paced. I certainly wouldn’t call it the best western ever made or even the best western starring Clint Eastwood, (which I personally believe is ‘Unforgiven’). Now with all that being said. This is still a terrific film which not only stood the test of time, but cemented Clint Eastwood as an international cinematic legend.
8/10 – Calum Roberts
