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The Good, the Bad and the Ugly


The Good, The Bad and The Ugly (1966) r

Three men with questionable morals find themselves in search of gold buried in a remote cemetery. They all have common history and very little trust to each other.


Final movie of Leone's Dollars Trilogy and the best of the three. The Good, The Bad and The Ugly is considerable step up in storytelling and production values. It's also stylistically much more refined than the previous two and shows Leone already at his prime.

Story is good and even when separated all three characters move naturally towards the same destination. It's little lighter in tone than previous two but under the humor lies also the darkness (especially related to The Civil War). The story itself is quite simple but it's told like it has epic proportions.

Acting is really solid and the lead trio have good chemistry. Quite a few minor characters are memorable as well (like the Union captain and storekeeper). Soundtrack is good but it's not among my favorite Morricones. Settings are great, tons of extras make war scenes look good and cinematography is marvelous.

There are some minor issues that take away half a popcorn though. I don't like how van Cleef gets (or at least feels like he gets) much less screen time than the other two. On a related note I think some small editing would have benefited the film (by cutting little from Tuco and Blondie messing with each other would have made the film more compact and increased van Cleef's screen time in proportion to others). There's also little too much comedic elements.

As a whole much better than I remembered. It's not far from getting full points but it's a tad too long and little too comedic for my tastes.