{Per un pugno di dollari}
 The Sergio Leone "spaghetti westerns" did not simply add a new chapter to the genre...they reinvented it. From his shockingly violent and stylized breakthrough, A Fistful Of Dollars, to the film Quentin Tarantino calls "the best-directed movie of all time," The Good, The Bad And The Ugly, Leone's vision did for westerns what talkies did for all movies back in the 1920s: it elevated them to an entirely new art form. Fully restored, presented in high definition with their best-ever audio, and including audio commentaries, featurettes and more, these films are much more than the definitive Leone collection...they are the most ambitious and influential westerns ever made. Storyline: An anonymous, but deadly man rides into a town torn by war between two factions, the Baxters and the Rojo's. Instead of fleeing or dying, as most other would do, the man schemes to play the two sides off each other, getting rich in the bargain. Written by Andrew Hyatt Reviewer's Note: Reviewed by Casey Broadwater, June 8, 2010 -- When John Wayne rode the plains, life was pretty simple for a gunslinger. Heroes wore white hats and treated their women kindly, while villains sauntered into town in ten-gallons worth of black, their upper lips hardened into permanent sneers. The Law of the West was a balancing act between freedom and justice. Good was good, bad was bad, and moral ambiguity just plain hadn't been invented yet. The reality of westward expansion, however, was a great deal less grounded in ethical certainties, and I've always thought the myth of the noble West was a ploy to help us feel better about how we treated the Native Americans. Hollywood embraced the western for its easy-to-script, good vs. evil, let's get out there and show 'em how Americans get 'r done ethos, but after churning out title after title, the formula began to lose its potency. In the meantime, Europeans—most of whom had never even been to the wild, wild West—were putting new spins on the genre and paying close attention to what might as well be called the "eastern." Yes, the samurai movie. Inspired by Akira Kurasawa's Yojimbo, a film about a masterless swordsmen plying his steel-edged trade for cold hard cash, Italian director Sergio Leone would create a different, cynical kind of western, where good was relative and bad was more than just an attitude. For the traditional Hollywood cowpoke tale, things were about to get ugly. While not the first so-called "spaghetti western," A Fistful of Dollars certainly announced the presence of this new European take on a distinctly American idiom. Director Sergio Leone, whose only previous credited film was the under-the-radar Colossus of Rhodes, saw in Kurasawa's Yojimbo an opportunity to reinvent the flagging western genre, which had grown predictable and stale. The irony, of course, is that Kurasawa was immensely influenced by the earlier westerns of John Ford, and borrowed the plot of Yojimbo from Dashiell Hammett's noir- ish novel Red Harvest. When Leone set about remaking Yojimbo as a western— unauthorized and unbeknownst to Kurasawa—he was essentially bringing the story full circle and around the globe, telling an American tale, processed through a Japanese aesthetic and moral filter, with a European cinematic sensibility. Somehow, it works. While Leone's soon-to-be- characteristic style is still in its nascent stages here—the two sequels grow progressively more assured—A Fistful of Dollars is, in several ways, a genre game-changer, effectively overturning many long-held tenets of the "classic" western cinematic mythology established by John Ford and others. This has everything—and, at the same time, nothing—to do with the film's threadbare plot. By which I mean that the story is exceptionally simple, but the crux of it—moral ambiguity and greed —is something entirely new to the genre. A stranger—a perfectly stoic Clint Eastwood, in the role that would launch him to stardom—rides into the barren Mexican border town of San Miguel. We know nothing about his past, but like the nameless, masterless swordsman of Yojimbo— played by the almost equally taciturn Toshiro Mifune—he's a drifter, looking to put his gun slinging skills to use for the highest bidder. Vying for control of the town are two warring factions, the gunrunning Baxter clan, led by a crooked sheriff (Wolfgang Lukschy), and the liquor-smuggling Rojos brothers, Don Miguel (Antonio Prieto), Esteban (Sieghart Rupp), and Gian Maria Volontè as the rifle-toting Rámon. (In the same way that the villain in Yojimbo uses a firearm against a swordsman, Rámon uses a more powerful weapon—a rifle—against the pistol-carrying protagonist.) The stranger—nicknamed "Joe" by the local undertaker—sees in this territorial stalemate a chance to earn some serious cash. He plays the two gangs against one another, flipping allegiances whenever there's a buck to be made. And herein lies the film's cynicism. In previous westerns, the good guys were out for justice; they did what was right precisely because it was right, with no expectation of reward. The Man With No Name, going after money, and money only, is one of the western genre's first true anti- heroes. He dresses the part, with a dirty hat, a bandit's poncho, and a week's growth of stubble. Gnawing on his cigarillo and grimacing into the southwestern sun, he's the total antithesis of a clean-shaven John Wayne-type with a pressed shirt and white hat. The violence he doles out with his trusty .45 has no moral justification whatsoever, and helping the innocent is definitely secondary to his greed-driven cause. And yet, he's a likeable, sympathetic character, and Eastwood plays him with a subtle wink in his eye. This is the genesis of the onscreen persona that Eastwood would cultivate for the rest of his career—a tough, world-wearied sort with an in-the-know smirk— and it's also ground zero for Sergio Leone's immediately recognizable directorial style, from the ultra-tight close-ups and deep compositions—utilizing a looming foreground object while some kind of action takes place in the background—to the tense, protracted Mexican standoffs that end in sudden bursts of bullet-strewn violence. Though A Fistful of Dollars isn't the best of the Man With No Name saga—it owes too much of a debt to Kurasawa—it is a terrific starting point for the trilogy, launching the careers of Eastwood, Leone, and composer Ennio Morricone, and introducing the world to westerns of the morally relativistic, hard-boiled spaghetti variety. It goes without saying that The Man With No Name trilogy belongs in every western fan's collection. These three films cataclysmically altered the course of the genre, and launched steely-eyed Clint Eastwood into super-stardom. Recommended. Cast Notes: Clint Eastwood (The Man With No Name [Joe]), Marianne Koch (Marisol), Gian Maria Volonté (Ramón Rojo), Wolfgang Lukschy (John Baxter), Sieghardt Rupp (Esteban Rojo), Joseph Egger (Piripero), Antonio Prieto [I] (Benito Rojo), José Calvo [II] (Silvanito), Margarita Lozano (Consuelo Baxter), Daniel Martín [I] (Julián), Benito Stefanelli (Rubio), Carla Calò (Antonia Baxter), Bruno Carotenuto (Antonio Baker), Aldo Sambrell), Mario Brega [I] (Chico). IMDb Rating (05/07/12): 8.0/10 from 55,526 users IMDb Rating (08/29/10): 8.0/10 from 39,590 users
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