Rate The Last Movie You Saw

It may be difficult, or even near impossible to believe now, but there was a time when The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly wasn't really regarded as a great movie, at least when you look at the initial critical reaction to it. And upon hearing that, some of you may wonder, "How can that be? After all, wasn't it a genre-defining classic, and one of the greatest Westerns ever made?". Well, to put it in my own words, I'd say that TGTB&TU didn't so much as define the Western in the first place, but helped to redefine the genre, after Hollywood had spent decades building the myth of a relatively sanitized, morally black-and-white vision of the American frontier. So given that background, it's no surprise that some critics were hostile to the film, as part of a larger bias against Spaghetti Westerns in general; after all, who was Sergio Leone and these other "Eyetalian" filmmakers to tear down their memory of the West from the outside, tarnishing the image of the most quintessentially American genre? However, it's precisely that kind of cultural vandalism that helped distinguish the film in the first place, allowing it to become not just one of the greatest Westerns, but also just one of the greatest movies of all time, in my humble opinion.

This is clear right from the first few seconds of the movie, as a wide shot of a vast, sun-baked desert, the kind of scenery that you could see in any number of Westerns, suddenly becomes an uncomfortably tight close-up of an ugly, sweaty man as he unexpectedly lumbers into frame, showing us the literal face of the "real" West, or at least Leone's unique vision of it, as he will continue to reenvision its familiar iconography for his own purposes here. It's an aesthetic that's both highly dynamic, and as gritty as the grain on the print itself, as the locations here are universally rough and shabby, with nary a sanitary soundstage in sight, as live flies constantly buzz around, and we see a never-ending Mount Rushmore of various sweat, grime (and occasionally blood)-covered faces in great detail, creating what is still the filthiest-looking vision of the American West I've seen on film.

This dirty feeling isn't just limited to the film's visuals, however, as it also extends to the main characters and their lack of traditional morality, with Lee Van Cleef's Angel Eyes ("The Bad") murdering multiple people, including a child, in just his first few scenes, Eli Wallach's Tuco ("The Ugly") living as a crafty, motor-mouthed Mexican bandito, wanted for at least a dozen different crimes in just as many counties, while Clint Eastwood's gunslinging Blondie (the so-called "Good") is motivated purely by personal financial gain, and only does one truly good thing the entire movie (and even that is still partly to benefit himself). A more accurate title would be The Morally Ambivalent, The Really Bad, And The Almost Just As Bad, but that's a big part of why the film has held up so well over half a century since its original release; it doesn't exist in order to justify some outdated, self-aggrandizing myth of "Manifest Destiny", but in order to present a darker, harsher portrayal of the West, one that feels more honest than many of its cleaner predecessors, regardless of how uncomfortable some may have been with that at the time.

Besides that, The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly is also exemplary for Leone's amazing overall direction of it, as it serves as a sort of culmination of his career up that point, taking the comparatively smaller scales of the previous Dollars films, and majorly upping the scope in its depiction of the mad, elaborate dash for treasure that is the central plot, both setting the stage for the director's future epics, while also serving as the all-time peak in his impressive body of work. However, while you may picture historical figures having dull, stuffy conversations in ornately decorated rooms when you think of epics, TGTB&TU is an epic that keeps its overall sense of fun from lagging, even with its 2 & 1/2+ hour runtime, as there are plenty of moments of levity, lots of colorful dialogue, and a generally playful mood, as seen in a great moment when a "Confederate" soldier brushes himself off to reveal the blue uniform beneath an accumulation of grey dust, before a sudden cut reveals our protagonists having been taken as prisoners of war in a Union Army camp.

In all honesty, this might just be the most purely entertaining movie I've ever seen, and even watching it now, twenty years after my original viewing, I found myself enjoying myself just as much as I did the first time, with so many moments here constantly bringing a faint smile upon my face, giving me the same exact sensations I felt when I was fourteen. I mean, Ennio Morricone's score by itself is fantastic, and about as iconic as movie music gets (and I'm not just talking about the "coyote yell" of the main theme, either), but how well it's used to underscore the onscreen action here? It's just glorious, glorious filmmaking all-around, resulting in an experience that's pretty much as close to perfection as movies get (hell, even the occasionally obvious English dubbing has its charm), and while the film was responsible for disregarding a lot of the myths surrounding the Old West, it replaced that with just as many of its own, creating reverberations not just throughout the rest of Eastwood's lengthy career, but the entire genre of the Western as a whole. To borrow some language from the Bible, it's the stone that the builders rejected, that ended up becoming one of the cornerstones of the modern Western, one that still stands tall, even to this day; "Go, go, amigo...".

Favorite Moment:

It may be difficult, or even near impossible to believe now, but there was a time when The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly wasn't really regarded as a great movie, at least when you look at the initial critical reaction to it. And upon hearing that, some of you may wonder, "How can that be? After all, wasn't it a genre-defining classic, and one of the greatest Westerns ever made?". Well, to put it in my own words, I'd say that TGTB&TU didn't so much as define the Western in the first place, but helped to redefine the genre, after Hollywood had spent decades building the myth of a relatively sanitized, morally black-and-white vision of the American frontier. So given that background, it's no surprise that some critics were hostile to the film, as part of a larger bias against Spaghetti Westerns in general; after all, who was Sergio Leone and these other "Eyetalian" filmmakers to tear down their memory of the West from the outside, tarnishing the image of the most quintessentially American genre? However, it's precisely that kind of cultural vandalism that helped distinguish the film in the first place, allowing it to become not just one of the greatest Westerns, but also just one of the greatest movies of all time, in my humble opinion.

This is clear right from the first few seconds of the movie, as a wide shot of a vast, sun-baked desert, the kind of scenery that you could see in any number of Westerns, suddenly becomes an uncomfortably tight close-up of an ugly, sweaty man as he unexpectedly lumbers into frame, showing us the literal face of the "real" West, or at least Leone's unique vision of it, as he will continue to reenvision its familiar iconography for his own purposes here. It's an aesthetic that's both highly dynamic, and as gritty as the grain on the print itself, as the locations here are universally rough and shabby, with nary a sanitary soundstage in sight, as live flies constantly buzz around, and we see a never-ending Mount Rushmore of various sweat, grime (and occasionally blood)-covered faces in great detail, creating what is still the filthiest-looking vision of the American West I've seen on film.

This dirty feeling isn't just limited to the film's visuals, however, as it also extends to the main characters and their lack of traditional morality, with Lee Van Cleef's Angel Eyes ("The Bad") murdering multiple people, including a child, in just his first few scenes, Eli Wallach's Tuco ("The Ugly") living as a crafty, motor-mouthed Mexican bandito, wanted for at least a dozen different crimes in just as many counties, while Clint Eastwood's gunslinging Blondie (the so-called "Good") is motivated purely by personal financial gain, and only does one truly good thing the entire movie (and even that is still partly to benefit himself). A more accurate title would be The Morally Ambivalent, The Really Bad, And The Almost Just As Bad, but that's a big part of why the film has held up so well over half a century since its original release; it doesn't exist in order to justify some outdated, self-aggrandizing myth of "Manifest Destiny", but in order to present a darker, harsher portrayal of the West, one that feels more honest than many of its cleaner predecessors, regardless of how uncomfortable some may have been with that at the time.

Besides that, The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly is also exemplary for Leone's amazing overall direction of it, as it serves as a sort of culmination of his career up that point, taking the comparatively smaller scales of the previous Dollars films, and majorly upping the scope in its depiction of the mad, elaborate dash for treasure that is the central plot, both setting the stage for the director's future epics, while also serving as the all-time peak in his impressive body of work. However, while you may picture historical figures having dull, stuffy conversations in ornately decorated rooms when you think of epics, TGTB&TU is an epic that keeps its overall sense of fun from lagging, even with its 2 & 1/2+ hour runtime, as there are plenty of moments of levity, lots of colorful dialogue, and a generally playful mood, as seen in a great moment when a "Confederate" soldier brushes himself off to reveal the blue uniform beneath an accumulation of grey dust, before a sudden cut reveals our protagonists having been taken as prisoners of war in a Union Army camp.

In all honesty, this might just be the most purely entertaining movie I've ever seen, and even watching it now, twenty years after my original viewing, I found myself enjoying myself just as much as I did the first time, with so many moments here constantly bringing a faint smile upon my face, giving me the same exact sensations I felt when I was fourteen. I mean, Ennio Morricone's score by itself is fantastic, and about as iconic as movie music gets (and I'm not just talking about the "coyote yell" of the main theme, either), but how well it's used to underscore the onscreen action here? It's just glorious, glorious filmmaking all-around, resulting in an experience that's pretty much as close to perfection as movies get (hell, even the occasionally obvious English dubbing has its charm), and while the film was responsible for disregarding a lot of the myths surrounding the Old West, it replaced that with just as many of its own, creating reverberations not just throughout the rest of Eastwood's lengthy career, but the entire genre of the Western as a whole. To borrow some language from the Bible, it's the stone that the builders rejected, that ended up becoming one of the cornerstones of the modern Western, one that still stands tall, even to this day; "Go, go, amigo...".

Favorite Moment: