Set at the time of the
American Civil War, three very different men go on a search for $200,000
worth of gold coins buried in a graveyard. The Good, The Bad, and The
Ugly by Sergio Leone was one of at least 400 westerns made by Italian
directors between 1963 and 1973 (somewhat condescendingly referred to as
"spaghetti westerns") and, though I'm not a big fan of the genre, is one
of the best I've seen. In the film, "Blondie" (Clint Eastwood), is the
good, "Angel Eyes" (Lee Van Cleef) the bad, and Tuco (Eli Wallach) the
ugly, though there is a thin line between the categories and Eastwood's
designation as "good" is questionable. At one point, Blondie implies that
only power matters when he says: "In this world, there are two kinds of
people-those with loaded guns and those who dig." Deserving of the label
"good" or not, Blondie is one of Eastwood's best roles and his cynical
and super cool demeanor brings the character to life.
Angel Eyes appears first
as a hit man who knows about the gold. We then see Blondie carrying out
a scam in which he arrests Tuco a dangerous criminal, collects the reward
for turning him in, then frees him as he is about to hang. Their partnership
is dissolved when Blondie leaves Tuco stranded in the desert, only to return
the favor when he makes Blondie march across the desert without water.
It is when they run into a stagecoach filled with dead and wounded soldiers
that they learn about the gold, but only Blondie discovers the name of
the grave in which the cache is buried. Tension mounts as the two fortune
seekers must deal with opposing Union and Confederate armies before they
can reach the cemetery where the money is buried. An exciting three-way
face off between the protagonists, photographed from multiple angles, with
the lush score of Ennio Morricone in the background, brings the film to
a memorable conclusion.
