For A Few Dollars More

Rating:
Summary: The Man With No Name and the Man In Black
Review: Federico Fellini is often credited as "the Greatest Italian Director." For me, however, Sergio Leone earned those laurels. More than deSica or Fellini, Leone's movies were Italian to the core: Grandiose, operatic, melodramatic, full of vendetta and vengeance. The irony is that Leone's most memorable movies took place not in Rome, the Abruzzi mountains or Sicily, but in the Old West.

With his epic "Once Upon a Time in the West" and "The Man With No Name" trilogy, Leone not only resuscitated the Western genre, but set a new standard. His first Western, "A Fistful of Dollars," was basically a retelling of Akira Kurosawa's "Yojimbo"; a Samurai tale transplanted south of the border in old Mexico. With "For a Few Dollars More," Leone really opens up as a screenwriter and director. Gone is the claustrophobic town of "Fistful," replaced by the full sweep of the great American Southwest (for which the drier regions of Spain provide a reasonable facsimile for those of us who know that Tucumcari is hardly so dry and El Paso nary as mountainous).

Leone also begins staking out his territory as director with this one, too. "For a Few Dollars More" bears more traces of Cecil B. deMille than Kurosawa, as Leone starts trending toward an epic production that reaches full fruition in "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly" and "Once Upon A Time in the West." However, Leone's *style* of Western could never be confused with John Ford -- rather, it hearkens back to the more violent moments found in Westerns such as "Winchester '73" (Anthony Mann), "High Noon" (Fred Zinnemann) and "Rio Bravo" (Howard Hawks), and looks forward to the gritty, realistic violence from directors influenced by Leone, such as Sam Peckinpah, Francis Ford Coppola and Martin Scorsese.

"For a Few Dollars More" is a tale of three men, and their respective missions: Indio, played by the great Gian Maria Volonte, is a sadistic, psychotic, killer and bank robber. His performance reminds me of Toshiro Mifune's best roles -- big, tough, and foreboding. Clint Eastwood plays one of the men who try to hunt Indio down, a bounty killer named "Manco," reprising his role from "Fistful" as a mercenary for hire who plays by rules from his own book. But it's Lee Van Cleef as Colonel Douglas Mortimer who really steals the show. If you think Clint's squinty-eyed visage fills men with fear, then you ain't seen Van
Cleef -- his eyes are steely, intelligent, intense; you can tell when Mortimer has somebody's number that he isn't bluffing.

The opening scenes set up the story beautifully: Indio and his gang are planning a big robbery at the Bank of El Paso and both Manco and Mortimer have set out to round up the bad guys. After a couple barroom scenes establishing the bounty killers' credentials as ice-cold killers, Manco and Mortimer pair off in a battle of wits, a showdown during nightfall in the streets of El Paso.

After proving to each other what deadly accurate shots they are, Mortimer proposes they team up to go after Indio and his gang, backed up by the realistic observation: "When two hunters go after the same prey, they usually wind up shooting each other in the back."

So working "one on the inside" (Clint) and "one on the outside" (Van Cleef), the two manouever Indio and his gang after they dynamite the bank and steal the safe. The scenes on the streets of Agua Caliente (Spanish for "Hot Water," which Manco and Mortimer will soon be in) are eerily silent. Indio' gang has free rein in the town, the hoofbeats of their horses a harbinger to windows slamming shut on the whitewashed adobe houses.

Though Clint plays a wise guy, over the course of the movie he discovers wisdom beyond his own years in the person of Mortimer. Clint may be cool, but never as cool-headed as Van Cleef, who sees through all of Clint's ruses and double-crosses. Van Cleef rides them out, cutting Clint way too much slack it seems. But by the final scene, a showdown between Mortimer and Indio, all the patience and faith Mortimer has invested in Manco pay off. For the showdown is rigged entirely in Indio's favour, but -- having learned a thing or two at the feet of a real man of integrity -- Manco shows up to make the playing field even for Mortimer. It's a beautiful scene, to see that Manco has dropped his cynical pose and accepted Col. Mortimer as a father figure.

The quintessential Leone Western (I won't degrade it by calling it a "Spaghetti Western"), "For a Few Dollars More" is filmed and cut a lot tighter than "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly," though it still comes out over two hours long. Ennio Morricone's soundtrack really melds seamlessly with the action onscreen. Morricone was to Leone as the great composer Bernard Herrmann was to Alfred Hitchcock: Leone's movies were only 60 per cent complete before Morricone laid down tracks just as pungent and larger-than-life as the story and actors on the screen. Today's composers, who are so busy trying to write "understated" scores for today's boring fare, could learn a thing or two from the beautifully bombastic Morricone.

The DVD widescreen presentation is much better than the fullscreen VHS. However, the colours are pretty washed out. I understand that MGM/UA has restored "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly"; I hope "For a Few Dollars More" is slated as well for restoration or preservation.

Rating:
Summary: DVD Sound Out of Sync with Picture
Review: The sound is out of sync with the picture on all copies of this DVD, so every gunshot is ruined; people are supposed to die AFTER the shot is heard, not before. Since all the gunning is one of the best things about this movie and is botched, the DVD is almost unwatchable(to me). The beating scene is also ruined; Manco & Mortimer keep staggering before you hear them get hit. The picture-quality is impressive, though. The movie itself is a classic, though much better when watched as part of The Dollars Trilogy.

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Summary: The Man With No Name returns...
Review: Clint Eastwood's role returns, a bounty hunter on the trail of Indio a very dangerous bandit (with a huge price on his head). But another man, Colonel Mortimer (played by Lee Van Cleef) is also on Indio's trail AND he's not just in it for the money!
But Indio isn't alone. Will The Man With No Name team up with the Colonel or will they go up against Indio's gang and end up dead?
Watch and see!

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Summary: The Clint and Lee Show
Review: This is the only Sergio Leone film released in America worth your time, and the attraction has nothing to do with anything Leone put in it. The script is the same kind of brainless, illogical mishmash Sergio brewed all his swill from. It's Clint Eastwood and Lee Van Cleef who salvage the whole thing. By the mid-60's these two had put in a decade and a half in the Hollywood studio system and bring every bit of that long experience to their scenes together. They have economy and humor that's great to watch, even in this tripe.

Rating:
Summary: Best of the trilogy
Review: this sergio is really the film that solidified sergio leones work - sergio had more money to spend with his success of fistful of dollars and started to created his trademarks striking visuals, eerie music, a slow lingering camera- the pocket watch theme used so scarily in for a few dollars more would be used again and again in all his films -once upon a time in the west and also once upon a time in america and also good bad and the ugly.

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Summary: Holy Jeez Mother Mary
Review: They don't come much worse than this one. A few interesting scenes but as usual with Leone this thing drags and drags. And his bad guys are so despicable and unclean they render themselves unwatchable. Do yourself a favor....Spoiler alert: and fast forward to the final scene, skip the rest of this turkey. Clint's cool as hell but even he can't carry this grunt-n-squintathon. Wasn't very popular in the 60's, and doesn't translate at all now.

Rating:
Summary: Classic Clint...
Review: This review refers to the Delux Widescreen Edition VHS.....
He's back for the money again. This time as a "Bounty Killer", who always gets his man. When the poster says "Wanted Dead or Alive", look out if Clint's in the neighborhood! The man with no name (they do mention a name in this one but never actually refer it to him, so it's anybody's guess) has been tracking down the small fry, and now the big fish,Indio, has escaped from jail, leaving a bloody trail and a big price on his head.
Clint follows his trail, but he's not alone in his quest,Col. Mortimer(Lee Van Cleef) is determined he will be the one that gets this guy.They each try to "dissuade" the other, but to no avail. So they team up and set a plan in motion. But can Mortimer really be trusted? Is the money his only motive? Will he betray our guy?
There's lots of great western action and classic scenes, as these two persue Indio and his bloodthirsty gang of thieves.You won't want to miss a minute of it as these two quick draws show their stuff.There are also some wonderful comic moments to break up the action,watch for those.
If you're thinking of getting the VHS or waiting for a special edition DVD to come out you'll be happy with this tape. The digital Video transfer is a good picture, the widescreen(there's also a standard format edition if you prefer) lets you view all the great western scenery, and basically the sound(Hi-Fi) is good as far as clarity and the great musical score by Ennio Morricone. But the dubbing of the dialouge is a little off.The movie is so good though, I could not bring myself to take off a whole star just for that reason. It's classic Clint and Director Sergio Leone knows how to make a clasic western!
Sit a spell and enjoy....Oh and where DOES Clint get those wonderful panchos?.......Laurie

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Summary: Nihilistic Euro-Western Values
Review: Europe's rejoinder to "Bonnie and Clyde": where director Arthur Penn finds romanticized nostalgia in the story of two lovers on the run against the forces of "law and order," Sergio Leone carefully deconstructs the "realist" cinema, turning cliches and stereotypes inside-out on his way to producing four "spaghetti westerns" that would change a moribund genre forever.

Here, Leone first fully develops his trademark characterization technique: two (or more) men, usually opposed ideologically, are forced to work together toward a common goal. Eastwood's "Man with No Name" returns with even less personal, overt motivation than he had in his first film with Leone (where at least he was given a revenge motive for the final reel). Here, "No Name" is simple ruthless calculation, tallying up dead bodies in a trumbrel to be certain that he has his figuring straight. (Sergio Corbucci answers this character in "The Great Silence" via Klaus Kinski's bounty killer--who consistently uses "the law" to attain his monetary goals, and thus appears even more amoral than Eastwood.)

Lee Van Cleef, however, introduces a narrative dialectic: an ex-Confederate officer, a "perfect gentleman" become a perfect vengeful "angel" of death, Van Cleef reminds us of the loss of morality--of an apocalyptic world from which conventional values of good and evil, justice and right, have been stripped away. He is diametrically opposed to Gian Maria Volonte's "El Indio"--a bandit so haunted by his past (one which includes a relative of Van Cleef's) and the death of his ethics that he apparently suffers from a mild schizophrenia that only marijuana can alleviate. In between the two, therefore, stands Eastwood--the man with no conscience, no past, and apparently no future.

Much of the film seems a warm-up to Leone's later masterpieces (his photography is far more striking, Morricone's music is more sophisticated, and the acting more nuanced than in "Fistful"). But it stands perfectly well on its own merits--a sort of controlled explosion in comparison to Leone's later massive mythmaking adventures in "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly," and, particularly, "Once Upon a Time in the West."

And many forget that just as "Fistful" made Eastwood a star, so too did "Few Dollars More" bring Van Cleef international fame. An even better role in "The Big Gundown" (by Sergio Sollimas) would follow a year later, as would "Days of Anger" and, of course, "TGTBATU." In "For a Few Dollars More," however, Van Cleef finds his stride as a character actor gone superstar--a killer with a past, the shards of a conscience, and the steeliest of gazes.

Rating:
Summary: soundtrack is not in synch
Review: I bought the "Man With No Name Trilogy" and the soundtrack for this DVD is greatly out of synch. There was no problem with the other two DVDs in this set. I sent two emails to MGM Customer service about this problem, but haven't had any response from them.

Rating:
Summary: A Great Film
Review: This is a great film, as the plotline is good and has many excellent scenes. From the jailbreak at the fortress to the final gunfight, there are many good sequences.
Also the small parts such as the hat shooting "contest" which happens when the characters played by Clint Eastwood and Lee Van Cleef, and the apples getting shot off the trees. A throughly brilliant film.