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Sergio Leone

Clint Eastwood, Eli Wallach, Lee Van Cleef, Aldo Giuffrè, Luigi Pistilli, Rada Rassimov

Sergio Leone, Sergio Leone, Luciano Vincenzoni, Luciano Vincenzoni

United Artists, PEA, Arturo González Producciones Cinematográficas, Constantin Film

Taglines: For three men the Civil War wasn't hell. It was practice.

While the Civil War rages on between the Union and the Confederacy, three men – a quiet loner, a ruthless hitman, and a Mexican bandit – comb the American Southwest in search of a strongbox containing $200,000 in stolen gold.

Reviews:

Author: drystyx
Not as bad as the other Leone Westerns. Still, that is not saying much at all. At 3/10, this is better than his totally ridiculous ones. It's still a dull movie with non credible one dimensional characters who have no motivation for a single thing they do. Three homicidal maniacs who are called good, bad, and ugly, but really they're all just bad and ugly. Eli Wallach steals the show. I think most people agree with me on that, and for some people he saves the show, but I need better writing, and more "credible characters in incredible circumstances" than we get with Leone. Blondie (Eastwood) kills anyone he sees in the wild. He kills other bounty hunters to steal their prisoner to bring in for rewards. It's a good thing we didn't have Allied soldiers like Blondie, or else all Germans would have to do to win the war would be surrender and let American GIs kill each other to steal prisoners to bring in. Imagine that. We would have lost WW2 if our soldiers were like Blondie (or Manko, or whatever his name was). The attempts to humanize the homicidal maniacs played by Clint and Eli only work for the brain dead idiots who buy into that. Such brain dead idiots don't last long in the hood or in volatile situations. Sadists do not get human. They only act human at times to get innocent victims to lower their guard. The three man shootout at the end is stolen from the pair of movies "The Jackal" and "Yellow Sky", and I'm not sure if it's better or not. Neither one is in a top one hundred all time movie gunfights or showdowns. It's weak and stupid. But when the spaghetti Westerns came out, the drug abusers and potheads loved them, and demanded they be acclaimed. The critics were either scared of the druggies or were druggies themselves, because the critics were bigger hacks than Leone for praising this garbage. How long will we endure the crack head idolization of this garbage? Probably another 30 years or so, until we get some mature viewers who are willing to make up their own minds about what is classic, instead of being sheep. Yep, Eli spoke of sheep in another Western, but it fits here. I give it a grade on a curb to make it 3/10, although compared to 1950s Westerns it is 1/10, but I'm lenient, because it isn't as bad as the other Leone Westerns. It isn't exactly "watchable", and you will fall asleep if you take it in one viewing, but the other Leone Westerns are even more boring than this one. Eli Wallach does do a great job, and for some people, that's enough.