A Fistful of Dollars

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⭐7.5/10

I have no idea what to think of this one. It has a few awesome qualities, but this is a 60 year old non-Hollywood movie made with a small budget, so it's impossible to think about this one in any modern sense. It is bizarre, completely lacks in logic, very hard to follow, and has silly things like terribly dubbed voices and ridiculous shoot outs. And yet?

I kinda liked it! Well first off, this movie looks incredible. It is dripping with style, and has the soundtrack to match by my guy Ennio Marricone. It's actually the first of the Dollars Trilogy (Good, Bad & Ugly) and I felt similarly with that one: awesome movie that I wished I loved more. Clint Eastwood is so incredibly handsome in this and I have no bigger man crush. And I guess my final verdict is kinda just that if you have Clint Eastwood being moody in old Spaghetti Mexican towns with a banging soundtrack, I simply must give a high score. 

And again, the style carries a lot of weight because at some point, I just had to accept that this movie makes no sense. Clint Eastwood is kinda a rugged bad guy with a few redeeming qualities, but he is also kinda responsible for the murder of like a hundred people? The shoot outs are so silly, going a good ten minutes when thirty seconds would have sufficed. Just guys getting absolutely massacred, one after the other, cut and paste scenes of guys shooting and other guys flying in the air. What is going on here? I suppose film editing didn't exist in the 60s? 

The dub is also hilarious. Dubs are always bad, but this movie has a dub for a kid where the volume is set to 400% and hard to stomach, and other moments where a bad guy is giggling like a teenage girl at a constant rate. While I understand that this was a different time and era, I just can't accept all these moments that would be completely panned if it happened for 1 seconds in a modern movie. 

Anyways, that's a lot of words to say that this is a weird movie that I kinda dug. It looks and sounds awesome, but if you're looking to be deeply invested in a story, then look elsewhere. 


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