For a Few Dollars More

11/15/2015

I was worried about you - all alone, with so many problems to solve... The middle part of Sergio Leone's dollars trilogy sandwich is a mighty hunk of meat and pasta. Plot has Clint Eastwood and Lee Van Cleef as bounty hunters who form a very uneasy alliance to bring down violent bandit El Indio (Gian Maria Volontè) and his gang. As befitting Leone in this sub-genre, the pic positively oozes charisma and class. His compositions are as striking as the coolness he wrings out from his lead actors, the characterisations bristling with a calm grizzle factor that beguiles as the story jumps from violence to suspense, from humour to misery, with surprises is store as well. The screenplay adheres to some clichés of the Western formula, but never at a cost to suspense and mystery, such as with

1/10/2022

I'd rank it slightly below the original, but that's unimportant as <em>'For a Few Dollars More'</em> is still a lot of fun. Clint Eastwood is tremendous again as the lead character, while Gian Maria Volonté reappears as a different character - usually I'm not a fan of actors playing different characters in a series, but I must make an exception here as Volonté is terrific; just as he is in the preceding 1964 film. One newcomer to the cast is Lee Van Cleef, who is brilliant too. A story regarding bounty hunting was always going to be enjoyable, which is most definitely the case here. The aforementioned trio are massively entertaining. I particularly found the ending to be one of the best parts of this. I was excited to check out <em>'The Good, the Bad and the Ugly'</em> even prior

4/18/2023

This is a waste of some wit. Of the dollar trilogy, this one had some wit to it, but it's wasted. There's an ongoing weird counting that the bounty hunters perform, which finally makes sense in the end. There's an interesting bit about the chimes, and drawing when the chime ends. And we get a name for No Name. But it's wasted on a movie that Leone made during what must have been the days when he really hated some brunette who scorned him. He spends most of the movie contriving so many ways to kill brunettes that he obviously is seeking a Nazi merit badge. He stopped worshiping Adolf and Eva soon after the dollar trilogy, though. There's no way to get past his Nazi ideology in this movie, and it ruins the movie. Not to mention the lack of credible characters and lack of credible motiv

9/5/2024

"El Indio" (Gian Maria Volontè) is a bank robber being hunted by poncho-clad bounty hunter “Mandi” (Clint Eastwood]. Meantime, Lee van Cleef’s debonair “Col. Mortimer" is also on the trail of our bandito and his gang, so the unlikely pair form an uneasy partnership in order to track him down and share the bounty. This most certainly ain't a film about trust - it's about greed, pure and simple and is great! It’s a bit of a slow burn - nothing happens very quickly, but that all adds bundles to the atmosphere and tension of the story. That said, it sure isn't dull: there is still plenty of gun fighting, fisticuffs and general nastiness as well as some clever, black, humour and a wonderfully evocative score from Ennio Morricone that gets us to the inevitable series of single, double and even t

1/22/2025

A spaghetti Cornetto trilogy? 75+% A lone man on horseback is seen travelling slowly towards us from a distance. Soon there is a seemingly senseless act of violence. It isn’t clear to me whether this ‘loose end’ is resolved later on in the film or whether it mainly functions as worldbuilding, for the benefit of the viewer, letting them know how little value human lives have in this place. After the opening credits follow on from this, the film proper begins. We see two men in a train carriage. The face of one is obscured as they are reading the Holy Bible, according to the text on it. We come to know the man with the obscured face as the film unreels. Not really having read any reviews or such like of this film, I wonder if I am the only person to ponder at the end of this man’s jo

1/30/2025

A spaghetti Cornetto trilogy? 75+% A lone man on horseback is seen travelling slowly towards us from a distance. Soon there is a seemingly senseless act of violence. It isn’t clear to me whether this ‘loose end’ is resolved later on in the film or whether it mainly functions as worldbuilding, for the benefit of the viewer, letting them know how little value human lives have in this place. After the opening credits follow on from this, the film proper begins. We see two men in a train carriage. The face of one is obscured as they are reading the Holy Bible, according to the text on it. We come to know the man with the obscured face as the film unreels. Not really having read any reviews or such like of this film, I wonder if I am the only person to ponder at the end of this man’s jo