A Fistful of Dollars

⭐ 8.0/10

(Originally written by Tim)

A western from 1964, I was listening to some stuff about Clint Eastwood and figured I should watch The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly, and decided to watch this because apparently it's the first of the Man With No Name trilogy. And it was great! A gunslinger shows up in town and plays 2 rival factions off each other, all to make a buck.

I'll start with the bad. I found the middle section of this movie pretty boring, and it kept losing my attention. So many characters with unclear names that all kind of look the same, it was tough to keep things straight.

The opening, however, hooked me right away, and I was very intrigued by the character. Clint is incredibly handsome, and he plays the stoic Western hero perfectly. I mean, look at this guy.

And the ending was incredibly exciting, with effective action given how old this movie was.

This movie is by Sergio Leone, with music by Ennio Morricone, and those are iconic names for a reason. Although it isn't filmed in America, it feels Western, with the distinct towns and environments. The music is perfect too, cliche at this point but only because movies like this made it that way. Compared to something like High Noon it is way more violent, the action more exciting, and overall just more artsy, with long sweeping shots of dusty old towns, and zooming close ups of serious men glaring at each other. When I think of westerns I always imagine a perfect and charming cowboy fighting off the clearly evil bandits, but Clint's character is more grey, with unclear intentions and actions that inflict pain on innocent people.

Can't wait to get to the next ones, although I did see that the run times are way longer than this one, and I am hoping they can hold my attention better.