Wednesday, January 20, 2010

A Fistful of Dollars (1964)

A Fistful of Dollars is the first of Sergio Leone's Dollars trilogy, and a western remake of Yojimbo's story. One town, two gangs and a stranger deciding to make some money on playing them against each other.

The plot isn't difficult, but some of it doesn't make much sense as it moves along. To easily does he succeed to play both sides, while not being to crafty about it. There's a couple of other holes there, but I'll not go into details at its late in the movie and contain spoilers.

This is very much Clint Eastwood's movie. Except him, there's not many interesting characters walking around in this town. He plays his part well, but this lacks the kind of interactions we see in Leone's final piece of his Dollar trilogy The good, the Bad and the Ugly.

Ennio Morricone played a huge part in that final piece as well. In this one his work isn't very remarkable. While Leone doesn't take all day on each shoot out in this movie, it works well with the fast paced action chosen. It might not be as stylish as his later work, but it's got a nice flair to it still.

Don't get me started on the scene close to the river and the scene with the burning house, as both are quite awful. Along with my other objections above, it leaves me very happy to remember Leone did so much better later in his career.

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