Sergio Leone followed up his final piece of his Dollar-trilogy with Once Upon a Time in the West. It's not difficult to spot the similarities between these two movies, but I think he did a better job overall on The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.
In this he does also take his time telling his story. There's a lot of dwelling on scenes and details, and not surprisingly the movie suddenly got quite a runtime. The plot isn't very huge, but Leone takes his time getting there anyway. A bigger production this time, results in more time to dwell with the train and in the town. It's not always such a great thing having bigger production budgets.
I like the characters of Frank and Mrs McBain, but think both Cheyenne and Harmonica should have had more meat to them because of the length of this movie. In a 90 minute movie I could have lived with them, but in this I think they are too simple characters.
It's easy to like Leone's way, but this time I can't give him as much praise as I did with The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. Unlike then the scenery change to little and the plot is too simple, to defend such a lengthy movie. It's still good, even great, but I still don't think it's the masterpiece it seems to be remembered as.
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