Reviews of For a Few Dollars More
Displaying all 2 reviews
Conner Rainwater
30May10
It perhaps has the greatest western premise of all time: Two Bounty Killers team up to hunt down and infiltrate a notorious gang of outlaws. Sergio Leone completely topped himself with this incredibly unprecedented sequel/prequel to A Fistful of Dollars. The budget is bigger, the story grander and the characters more ruthless. This is the greatest American western that America failed to make. It takes classics like Rio Bravo and The Searchers and improves them in ways they could never have dreamed to. There are no rules, only western justice and big showdowns. I absolutely love the dynamics between the characters in this installment of the Dollar’s Trilogy. Instead of having Clint Eastwood’s Man With No Name go solo again against the villains, Leone paired him with Lee Van Cleef’s Colonel Mortimer, a Union Soldier turned Bounty Killer. Now this was Van Cleef’s first major role and he pulls it off like a well seasoned star. He has such a great look and presence that he holds his own up against a living legend like Clint Eastwood quite easily. The two of them have a great father-son relationship that I think puts this movie at a very emotionally powerful level. Then, for the villains there are Indio and Klaus Kinski. Two equally odd actor’s and amazing characters. While Kinski doesn’t make it all that far in the film, he still manages to be one of the most memorable parts of the film. Indio in many ways is my favorite villain in the series, he is just so over the top and flat out weird that you can’t wait to see what he’ll do next. Sergio Leone really came into his own in terms of style and cinematic scale with For A Few Dollars More. The pacing is excellent, the visuals are unbeatable and the script is perfect. It is a movie that deals with a lot in such a flawless way. The ending is perhaps one of the greatest in motion picture history. The twist is absolutely brilliant and it turns the entire film into one really well executed revenge epic. Ennio Morricone’s score really sends the story away with an even more impressive range than he did with Fistful. All in all, it is very close to beating The Good, The Bad and The Ugly and easily my second favorite Western.
- Currently 5.0/5 Stars.
Byron Brubaker
16Nov09
This time Eastwood is named Monco. He’s not the only man with no name though really. I find it interesting that the same handful of actors appear throughout this trilogy, but except for Eastwood who maintains his iconic costume, everyone else plays new characters unrelated to their other portrayal(s). Everyone has no name except for how the surrounding plot or circumstances define them. Van Cleef makes his first appearance as a rival bounty hunter, though his Bad character in Good, Bad, and Ugly seems definitive since I saw it prior to this. Volonte makes his second appearance as a bank robbing, gang leading bandit with a tortured soul. These three leads are excellent and again Good, Bad, and Ugly seems more definitive, but the showdown at the end in this one was the first.
The story just didn’t feel as powerful in this one. There were some strange coincidences in the plot and the holes made it a bit more confusing. There seemed like there was something a little off with some of the sound effects and voice over dubbing compared to the other two films. Though the watch that played the little tune made for a great musical theme in this second part of the trilogy.
- Currently 4.0/5 Stars.