When the greatest trilogies of all-time are discussed, you can pretty much be guaranteed that Sergio Leone's Spaghetti westerns starring Clint Eastwood will rank near the top of the list. Many consider the third film, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, to be the greatest western ever made. It was not until the end of this summer that I began the trilogy and in the last month finally saw The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. My first thoughts after watching Fistful of Dollars, the first film in the series, was "Why didn't my grandpas watch Westerns like this?!?!" All I got were TV westerns where the good guy was never in any danger and was always completely, without any question, noble. Clint Eastwood’s man with no name is definitely not the noblest person in the West. A Fistful of Dollars follows Joe (Eastwood) as he switches loyalties from one gang to another as he plays them both to his greatest advantage. I later found out that Dollars is almost an exact remake of Japanese film by Akira Kurosawa, Yojimbo. This doesn’t change the fact that Dollars is wonderfully entertaining and helped to change the way that people looked at Westerns. Joe kills as he needs to, as all bounty hunters do and eventually gets caught as the gangs figure out what is going on. Eastwood plays Joe as the stoic faced killer that he is and creates one of the most recognizable figures in modern cinema. The ending is just a taste of the brilliant endings that will come in the following two films, For a Few Dollars More and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. In the second film, we are introduced to another hunter, the Colonel played by Lee Van Cleef. The relationship between the man with no name (Monco here) and the Colonel is the best developed and complex of the trilogy. Their initial meeting is probably one of the best showdowns ever filmed. While both men are essentially after the same thing, their reasoning is completely different, with the Colonel’s being the nobler of the two. Alas, the colonel is really the only righteous character in the entire series (even though he is a killer). For a Few Dollars More is ultimately the most rewarding film of the entire series; the relationship between the two leads is wonderfully developed, the shootouts are amazingly shot with music that will remain with you long after the film ends and the betrayals that each character tries to heap upon another will keep you riveted waiting for the next scene.

Now we come to The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, the quintessential Western. After all the amazing things that I have been told about this film, I was a little let down. While it is still a very good film, I would not put it on par with For a Few Dollars More. Perhaps it is because we do not have a relationship that rivals that of the man with no name (Blondie here) and the Colonel from For a Few Dollars More. Perhaps it was too broad in scope for my taste: bringing the civil war into play took me out of the western setting and at times I felt like I was in a war film. Sure it made for some great set pieces and set the film up for a magnificent ending that lives up to all its hype, but I always new that there was a betrayal coming. Tuco (Blondie’s former accomplice) and Angel Eyes (Lee Van Cleef in a different role) did not care at all about Blondie so any time they try to pull one over on Blondie it is not unexpected because they only worry about themselves. And you never worry about one of them killing Blondie until the end because he alone possesses the information that they need, so all tension is lost. Fortunately the film retains the humor of the first two as well as the music that builds every scene to a climax. This is especially true for the finale that Quentin Tarantino calls one of the greatest, if not the greatest endings of all-time. Now this I cannot disagree with because the scene is filled with tension built upon by Ennio Morricone’s wonderful score. Now we are not sure who will die first because we know that all three would kill the other. Leone lets the music and the faces do the talking as he takes his time with the camera shooting from many angles. It’s an extremely impressive scene, but does not change the fact that the rest of the film does not hold the same charm. Taken as a whole, it is one of the most entertaining sets of film that I have ever scene and is highly recommended to anyone looking to enjoy a good few hours or someone that wants to see where all of the western clichés of today’s films came from.