 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: Blondie (The Good) is a professional gunslinger who is out trying to earn a few dollars. Angel Eyes (The Bad) is a hit man who always commits to a task and sees it through, as long as he is paid to do so. And Tuco (The Ugly) is a wanted outlaw trying to take care of his own hide. Tuco and Blondie share a partnership together making money off Tuco's bounty, but when Blondie unties the partnership, Tuco tries to hunt down Blondie. When Blondie and Tuco comes across a horse carriage loaded with dead bodies, they soon learn from the only survivor (Bill Carson) that he and a few other men have buried a stash of gold in a cemetery. Unfortunately Carson dies and Tuco only finds out the name of the cemetery, while Blondie finds out the name on the grave. Now the two must keep each other alive in order to find the gold. Angel Eyes (who had been looking for Bill Carson) discovers that Tuco and Blondie meet with Carson and knows they know the location of the gold. All he needs is for the two to ... Written by Jeremy Thomson 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. The culmination of this new breed of western is undoubtedly The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. As the third film in the "Dollars" trilogy, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly presents Leone at the height of his creative and directorial powers, not to mention blessed with the biggest budget he'd had yet. The scope of the film is immense, as Leone takes us from tiny towns to embroiled Civil War battles, and from the craggy canyons of the characters' faces to sand-filled vistas that stretch from one horizon to the next. Even time itself seems subject to the film's enormity. At a hefty 179 minutes, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly should seem drawn- out and overlong. Instead, we're drawn into the tense and protracted stares between characters, waiting anxiously for that split-second moment of violence. A lesser film would've left whole spools on the cutting room floor, but each spare detail here builds up the world that the narrative inhabits. Set in Texas on the outskirts of the Civil War, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly is the story of three men vying to find $200,000 in Confederate gold. Blondie (Clint Eastwood) is the Good, an itinerant gunslinger who's running a scam with Tuco (Eli Wallach)—the Ugly—a conniving bandit well practiced in the art of backstabbing, and the two have a tenuous alliance based on mutual gain. Also after the coinage is Angel Eyes (Lee Van Cleef, in another iconic role)—the Bad—a cold- blooded killer with an icy stare that's like looking down the dual barrels of a shotgun. Tuco knows the cemetery where the money is buried, but not the exact location. Blondie knows the spot, but not the name of the cemetery. And Angel Eyes tracks them both, hoping to get his hands on the glittering payday. Allegiances flip-flop and niceties are quickly dispensed with as the three men get nearer and nearer to the treasure. That our anti-hero Blondie is after money—not justice—is once again indicative of the new, cynical direction that Leone was taking with the western. Decency and integrity were no longer adequate rewards, in and of themselves, and though Blondie is the Good in the film, he's rarely "good" in the conventional sense. Tuco is the most blatantly rapacious—when he gets to the cemetery he's basically running around with dollar signs in his eyes—but Blondie is also driven inherently by greed. This materialistic hunt is set against a backdrop of war's absurdities—thousands of soldiers die, for instance, to take a wholly inconsequential bridge—and Leone seems to be saying that both war and greed are surefire routes to senseless violence. And there's plenty of fun, senseless violence. More than just a continued upheaval of its genre, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly is an ultra-cool exercise in style, from the cleverly cut gun battles to Clint Eastwood in his knee-length duster, squinting into the sun with a half-smoked stogie wedged in his grimacing teeth. The three principle actors are simply a pleasure to watch. Lee Van Cleef simmers with a dastardly suaveness, Eastwood brings his wry smile, and Eli Wallach stomps through the narrative, often stealing the show from Clint himself. There's a reason why people still watch the films in the Man With No Name trilogy, and it's not because they're influential or game-changing—though they certainly are, serving as predecessors to the "acid westerns" of Sam Peckinpah and Alejandro Jodorowsky—but simply because they're so infinitely entertaining. 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 [Blondie]), Lee Van Cleef (Angel Eyes Sentenza), Eli Wallach (Tuco Benedito Pacifico Juan Maria Ramirez), Aldo Giuffrè (Northern officer), Mario Brega [I] (Corporal Wallace), Luigi Pistilli (Padre Ramirez), Claudio Scarchilli), Rada Rassimov (Maria, the prostitute), John Bartho (Sheriff), Enzo Petito (Storekeeper robbed by Tuco), Livio Lorenzon (Baker), Al Mulock (One-armed gunslinger), Antonio Casale (Jackson [Bill Carson]), Sandro Scarchilli), Benito Stefanelli (Member of Angel Eyes' gang). IMDb Rating (07/24/14): 8.4/10 from 110,219 users Top 250: #97 IMDb Rating (05/07/12): 8.3/10 from 67,991 users Top 250: #119 IMDb Rating (08/29/10): 8.3/10 from 43,531 users Top 250: #121
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