The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

It's been ages since I posted a movie review—a fact that doesn't sit well with me, given that I originally started this blog for the expressed purpose of writing movie reviews! That being said, I figured I'd need to review a very suitable movie for my glorious return to the medium, and what better movie to review than one of the most legendary westerns of all time?

I'd better get this out of the way now: when it comes to westerns, I'm hands-down a John Wayne loyalist. I'd take the Duke over Clint Eastwood any day, but having said that, that shouldn't imply that certain Clint Eastwood westerns aren't good movies. In fact, some of the westerns he's starred in have shaped the very genre of the western into what it is today! Case in point, Sergio Leone's 1966 classic The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly—one of the, if not the, landmark "spaghetti western" ever put to film.

Though when watching a film like The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, it's hard to label this an Eastwood western, because even though he gets top billing (and because it completes a trilogy with his man-with-no-name character), this movie belongs rightfully to Italian director Sergio Leone, who proves here that he had a stunning grasp and vision of the western genre when making this film—not to mention U.S. history with respect to the western frontier and the Civil War, because The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly takes place pretty soon after the Civil War has concluded (or at least while on its last legs).

In fact, the Civil War provides the talisman of the story: $200,000 worth of gold coins that an escaped Union soldier named Jackson Bill Carson has stolen and hidden. The existence of this treasure is first discovered by hired gun Angel Eyes (Lee Van Cleef) while baiting his newest hit, and later by slimy and greedy gunman Tuco (Eli Wallach). Tuco discovers the existence of the gold while torturing his partner, Eastwood's man with no name (even though Tuco refers to him as "Blondie"), by dragging him across the desert without the aid of water or shelter for days. Suffice it to say, Tuco and Blondie had something of a falling out (as illustrated in the movie's first hour), and Tuco didn't take too kindly to it. But as luck would have it, Tuco and Blondie were the first to find Bill Carson, and while dying, Carson disclosed the secret of his gold to each man separately: to Tuco, he gave the location of the cemetery where he'd buried the treasure; to Blondie, he gave the name of the grave the treasure's buried in. Suffice it to say, Blondie and Tuco now have to grudgingly rely on one another in order to find the gold . . . but not before stumbling upon Angel Eyes in a Civil War POW camp, who has his own sights set on finding the gold for himself.

What strikes me more than anything else about The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, is how well it's made! I never thought a Western could be expanded into such a sweeping, sprawling epic, but Leone did just that! His magnificent direction is visible at every turn: the camerawork, the editing, the soundtrack, the supreme close-ups—they all make for a remarkable moviegoing experience! Just from the opening scenes, tension is built so naturally not by gunfights . . . but by sheer silence. The film opens with three gunfighters all converging on a saloon, none of them saying a word, the only sound in the air their footsteps on the gravel below. In that deadening silence, a sense of deep foreboding emerges, and just explodes the moment they enter the saloon and are gunned down off-screen by Tuco. No dialogue is actually spoken, either, until at least one scene later, after a very uncomfortable and solitary dinner scene between Angel Eyes and his bait. (Talk about less being better!)

Personally, I loved the labels (good, bad, and ugly) applied to each character after they made their entrance, as it showed a very creative approach to introducing each character. Along that same vein, the acting itself is quite impressive, too. For Eastwood, the acting is about standard, and we're treated to lots and lots of his brooding silence. Though he does show a compassionate side once in a while, like when he offers his cigar to a dying Union soldier for a few comforting puffs before lights out. Lee Van Cleef, fresh off the previous installment For a Few Dollars More (though in a different role), is simply marvelous as the brutal Angel Eyes. When he rides in at the beginning of the film and baits his first hit, I was totally wonderstruck by the evil smile he wore . . . and was especially undone by the fact that he never once took his eyes off his mark—not during his entrance to the house, nor when he sat down at the dinner table, nor when he scooped out a dinner plate for himself, nor during the entire stretch of their conversation. He truly earned his branding of "The Bad."

But in the final analysis, the show belongs firmly to Eli Wallach's Tuco! At first, he strikes you as greedy and annoying, but after a while, he damn near steals every scene he's in—and worse yet, you almost want to start cheering for the guy! Almost ironic that he's labeled "The Ugly" right from the opening scene. (And from that breakdown, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to learn who "The Good" is.)

The score by frequent Leone collaborator Ennio Morricone has become nothing short of legend in the film score canon, particularly for westerns. I really must marvel at the musical genius of Morricone, because his film scores somehow capture the very essence, the unique and telling depth of not just the individual scene but of the greater whole—imparting the rise and fall of each story magically through the sounds and the emotions of each note. One of my favorite Morricone scores is from The Untouchables, which captures the heartbreak and the noir sense of 1930s classicism like no other film score outside of Chinatown could. And the same can be said for Morricone's score for The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, because his tunes here have irrevocably linked themselves with showdowns, solitary strangers, and lonely nights on the prairie. The music over the scene where Tuco runs through the cemetery is probably the most recognizable tune, aside of the "whistling" opening score, that is.



The finale, too, is marvellously filmed, and showcases one of the best showdowns in cinema history. Like the opening shootout, nary a word is spoken. The power of the scene is carried purely on the silence of the stare-down.



If I have one complaint about The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, though, it's how the dialogue is framed. Being that this was filmed largely with Italian actors, it's understandable that nearly all their lines were going to be dubbed over in English. But it just looks so blatantly obvious that it often reminds me of a bad Godzilla remake. The voice actors weren't much better, either, mostly because their accents are too thick to sound authentically western. Though I think the three main stars did their own voices throughout the film (I know Eastwood did, at least; Lee Van Cleef looks real enough, as does Eli Wallach). Nevertheless, I still give this film a 9.5 out of 10, with high marks to director Sergio Leone for fashioning such an influential film as this.