The Good, The Bad and The Ugly (1966)

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966)

8/10

 

Starring

Clint Eastwood

Lee Van Cleef

Eli Wallach

Directed by Sergio Leone

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly has over the years stood out as a classic western film, the movie is the final addition to the Dollar Trilogy, starring Clint Eastwood as a man with no name and directed by Sergio Leone.

The movie carved its story around the ongoing American Civil War between 1861 – 1865. The cinematography in this movie is notably different from the previous as this movie had many wide shots, and thanks to more budget (the movie cost twice the amount to produce than For a Few Dollars More (1965)) Sergio was able to add more effects.

The movie is focused on three gunslingers all trying to make a fortune from a buried cache of Confederate gold worth $200,000. The gunslingers were a bounty hunter (Clint Eastwood), Angel Eyes (Lee Van Cleef) and Tuco (Eli Wallach).

Van Cleef played a totally opposite role (Mortimer) in For a Few Dollars More (1965) where he was a good guy seeking revenge, here he is the main antagonist, killing at will and more focused on his greed than anything else. Missing from this movie is Gian Maria Volontè, who has played the villain in the first two films (A Fistful of Dollars (1964) and For a Few Dollars More (1965)), his role was given to Eli Wallach because Leone wanted the character to have a comic undertone.

Making $25 million on its $1.2 million budget this film has received critical acclaim as one of the best films in history and one of the best Westerns.

After the movie introduces our leads as The Ugly: Tuco a bandit, The Bad: Angel Eyes (a mercenary and a sergeant) and The Good: a bounty hunter whose name is not mentioned. The bounty hunter and Tuco stroke a deal, where Tuco is captured and submitted to the sheriff and the bounty on his head is claimed. When Tuco is to be hanged, the bounty hunter will orchestrate his escape so he can catch him again and reclaim the bounty in another state.

Things went sour when the bounty hunter decided to betray Tuco, leaving him for dead in the desert. Tuco survived and was hell bent on revenge. Angel Eyes went about taking out people in other to find out where the confederate gold is hiding, while Tuco’s plan of revenge caused him to cross path with the custodian of the gold.

But Tuco’s greed made him loose the location of it to the bounty hunter who held it as insurance so Tuco will not kill him and runoff to go get the money.

Soon all their paths crossed and with greed in their eyes.

If you have not decided to get this classic trilogy in your archive, then that archive of movies is incomplete.