The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1967)

hyped garbage

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

An all time favorite that can be watched many times. The dialogues are iconic. I love the music.

"The Good, The Bad and The Ugly" is the 3rd and the last film of Sergio Leone's Dollars trilogy which is also known as The Man with No Name. It is one of the best western films of all time, in my opinion the best. After this film, Clint Eastwood began to be recognized as an International film star. The film opens with a very familiar theme song composed by Ennio Morricone. I have heard this soundtrack a lot of times in other films, commercials and games. This instrumental soundtrack is one of the most iconic scores in the film history. When this theme song is combined with the presence of Clint Eastwood, as Blondie, it is even more meaningful. After the two films of the trilogy, I became familiar with Sergio Leone and his directing style. He uses extreme facial close-ups to express the feelings of a person without using conversations. He also uses long shots for the same purpose. Just by looking at the face of the actor from up close, you get to understand how he feels. In his films you get to see a lot of silent but expressive scenes. Take the last scene in the cemetery as an example. Before shooting starts, camera moves from one face to another, from one pistol to another. This scene starts with full long body shots and ends with extreme close ups to the eyes. This takes more than 4 minutes, and creates one of the most iconic scene of the film.When I watch a film, I don't pay much attention to the technical details. I like to write about how a film makes me feel and why. But here, it was impossible not to talk about his directing style, which changes the course of the film completely. Once again, the soundtracks including not only the theme song, are all over the story, which makes the audience feel the tense of a particular scene. Sergio Leone is one of the directors who uses soundtracks as a power over the story. With all the struggles during the filming of the trilogy, after "The Good, The Bad and The Ugly," he managed to put his name as one of the best directors of all times. The film was made with a budget of $1.2 Million and grossed over $25 Million. While I am writing this review, "The Good, The Bad and The Ugly" stands on the 9th place in IMDB's top 250 films of all times. The story is intense, the performances are amazing and the atmosphere is real. This film has everything that a film must have in order to be considered a masterpiece"The Good, The Bad and The Ugly" opens with three different scenes, where we get to meet The Ugly, The Bad and The Good respectively. All three scenes take around 30 minutes, and if I haven't counted wrong, a total of 9 people die, three per character. Sergio Leone uses first scenes of his films to introduce us the main characters of his story. He uses this storytelling technique in all his three films. By doing this, he prepares us to the real plot, and creates a credibility over his main characters. The role of The Ugly, Tuco, is played by Eli Wallach. At first, I found this choice surprising, and if I wouldn't have seen the actors, I would have named Gian Maria Volonte, as The Bad, Clint Eastwood as The Good and Lee Van Cleef as The Ugly. But, in the end of the film, I have seen that the casting choices are exactly how they are supposed to be. Tuco is the most distinctive character of the film and Lee Van Cleef couldn't have performed well in this role. In the first two films, Gian Maria Volonte was the main villain of the story. When you look at "The Good, The Bad and The Ugly," there is actually no villain in it, therefore it makes sense why he was left out."The Good, The Bad and The Ugly" has an easy plot. It is about three gunmen who go after 200K Dollars buried in a cemetery. The story takes place during the Civil War in America. Even though the main characters have nothing to do with it, the story of "The Good, The Bad and The Ugly," evolves around the Civil War. The adventures of these gunmen, on their journey to the cemetery, are interrupted a lot of times because of the war. In these scenes, Sergio Leone shows us the real effects of the war on people. Destroyed towns, lost lives and killed people are focus points of the story. It is fascinating, how you get to see the realities of the American Civil War, in an Italian made film. From all points of views, "The Good, The Bad and The Ugly" is a masterpiece which all cinema fans must see.

"The Good, the Bad and the Ugly" is a bloated spectacle. Spectacles were the big thing (pun intended) in the mid-sixties. Leone (or his cinematographer) had an eye for landscape; but Leone never had spectacle-director David Lean's craftsmanship, nor his concern for character. Following "For a Few Dollars More" (imho the finest entry in the "dollars trilogy") Leone had more money than he should have been allowed. Clint Eastwood pocketed much of it. Coming off "Rawhide" and working cheap for Leone in "A Fistful of Dollars" Eastwood proved he could hold the big screen even better than the small one. Eastwood knows how to walk, to stand, to posture himself to attract the eye. Always an underrated actor, he made the trilogy, not Leone (despite the director's later wry comment that Eastwood had two expressions, one with a hat . . .).Eastwood is "the good" in an extremely relative way. Leone's west is a world where towns might be planets in science fiction, they're so separate. And none of them seem to have any law; despite the occasional badge, their laws, such as they are, seem to be based on circumstance rather than morality."The bad" is second-string actor Lee van Cleef, coming into his glory. He played an avuncular character in "For a Few Dollars More" (not the same character). Leone tried to get his hooks on several better or better-known actors (as he had with Eastwood's role in "Fistful") and got stuck with van Cleef again. Well, that worked out just fine. Bronson might have been excellent, but playing second fiddle to Eastwood might not have been his style.NY stage actor and movie star Eli Wallach (legendary from this role) is Tuco, a bandit with no moral compass. Wallach's comedy "How to Steal a Million" (starring Audrey Hepburn and an unlikely Peter O'Toole) came out also in 1966 and it's interesting to compare his two characters, one a jet-setting businessman and the other an unimaginably dirty western drifter). Oh, and in the scene where he's trying to find the grave, Wallach runs like a girl.The plot: the good (Eastwood) the bad (van Cleef) and the ugly (Wallach) chase after buried gold, with changing alliances to suit their needs. But to get the gold, the three have to fight their way through a war (loosely based on Sibley's New Mexico campaign in early 1862, fitting for the date on Arch Stanton's grave marker).I thought this was a great movie the first few times I saw it--on television, shown on two nights, broken by commercials. Seeing it again for the first time in years, restored and uncut, I changed my opinion.The story takes about an hour to start. The good, the bad and the ugly are introduced in unconscionably long sequences. Nearly every scene could have been trimmed with no loss to the story.But Leone is not interested in story. As he proved in his even more bloated epics "Once Upon a Time in the West" (where he dawdles through a credit sequence that is a mini-movie in its own right and longer than most "short features") and the pretentious but tedious "Once Upon a Time in America",Leone is interested in showing off what he can do with money. He spends as if he's a congressperson and his movies are government programs: the more he gets, the more ways he can find to waste it.The first hour: meet the characters. Some of it's fun, especially Tuco's chase of "Blondie"; but it's bloated, full off Leone's trademark too-close closeups and far-off vistas (can he do nothing in between?) The second hour: the plot gets rolling and Blondie, Tuco and "Angel Eyes" begin their episodic interactions. The first third of the third hour could be liberally cut with no devastating results to the story or the movie. And they even restored some scenes in a new version! Can there be too much of a good thing? You bet there can. Tuco's scene talking to a dead chicken might clear up a few points previously left vague, but it adds nothing to the film.Spoilers ahead: The last half-hour, where all the ragged ends begin being sewn together, is brilliant. I own the Leone westerns to see just the good bits over and over, and the climax here almost makes one feel squirming through the first two and a half hours was worth every yawn. From the time Blondie fires his cannon until the final frame, especially the search through the cemetery and the classic showdown between the three, when they have finally left the war behind and only they exist in the world to live or die, is beautifully shot and acted.The Good: 1) Ennio Morricone's legendary score. The movie's theme is rightfully iconic, and I love his "Ecstasy of Gold" (I'm a sucker for bells). His score also has foreshadowing of his delicate work in "The Mission" in the 1980s. 2) Clint Eastwood. While Eastwood's flicks as director are strangely humorless, Eastwood's wry humor and charm shine through this movie's bloat. He's an underrated film actor who deservedly shot to stardom in these films. 3) Lee van Cleef. While no one's first choice for a costar, van Cleef seems to realize this is his moment and he makes the most of it, becoming one of the most slyly despicable baddies in westerns. 4) Eli Wallach. While I'm tempted to move him to "the bad" for stealing almost every shot he's in, his performance is good . . . if tiring when the movie his watched on several outings. Wallach did not know how to dial Tuco back; neither did Leone who, I guess, decided, for once, to get value for money. Nevertheless, Eastwood can express more with a flick of his cigar than Wallach for all his overacting. 5) Spain. Franco, the one fascist dictator not targeted in WW2, ran an oppressive regime, but one where filmmakers found they could get anything they wanted for a well-placed bribe. The long shots of the land do resemble the never-never land of the old west, but they have their own stark beauty. Just as one can't go wrong with Tuscany, it's difficult to make this part of Spain look bad on film (Lean even used it in "Lawrence of Arabia").The Ugly: Leone. His closeups of ugly actors, his meaningless tracking shots, the very overwhelming bloat of the whole movie when seen in one go. If any movie benefited from being chopped up by commercial television this one did. Had I not known, from repeated previous tv viewings, just how good the climax was, I might never have finished it.Overall, a good story well acted, but with no sense of restraint. By all accounts Leone was a glutton. He simply never knew when to stop eating. He also never knew when to cut a movie. He could easily trim an hour out of this long-winded, overblown, occasionally messy flick and it would never be missed.

As a person "of a certain age", and a true movie buff, it is now startling to me that I managed to miss experiencing this gem until 2018. It is truly a masterpiece. And, as said "movie buff", am somewhat embarrassed to admit this ignorance. Stunning is not a cliché when applied to TGTBTU. And omg that classic, iconic score.So, expecting to see a plethora of Oscar nominations/wins, was stunned to learn on IMDB that there was not even one of either! This compelled me to search Wikipedia to understand how this omission occurred. It became clear quickly. Simply put, 1967 was a big year for Hollywood. And the oscars were at that time limited to only 5 nominees per category. Best Pictures: "In the Heat of the Night", "The Graduate", "Bonnie and Clyde", "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner" (all truly worthy of the honor), and "Dr. Doolittle".Excuse me? "Dr. Doolittle"??? Over THIS? Well, it was indeed the psychedelic 60's.