Clint Eastwood and Sergio Leone were a match made in Western movie heaven. The Dollars Trilogy is iconic in every sense of the word, with Leone paving the way as the pioneer of the spaghetti Western. Consisting of A Fistful of Dollars (1964), For a Few Dollars More (1965), and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966), the legendary filmmaker’s trilogy is still revered today as the gold standard of Westerns, spaghetti or otherwise.
‘The Good, the Bad and the Ugly’ Ranked ‘Best Western Movie in Film History’
Recently, Collider published a list of the “10 Best Western Movies in Film History.” Sitting pretty at No. 1 is the finale of Leone’s famed trilogy, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. It’s a well-deserved designation for this film.
Released on Dec. 23, 1966, in Italy, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (for the uninitiated) follows three men “in a race to find a fortune in gold buried in a remote cemetery.” It stars Eastwood as Blondie (“The Good”), Lee Van Cleef as Sentenza (“The Bad”), Eli Wallach as Tuco (“The Ugly”), Aldo Giuffrè as Alcoholic Union Captain, Antonio Casas as Stevens, Rada Rassimov as Maria, and Luigi Pistilli as Father Pablo Ramirez. Leone directed from a screenplay he co-wrote with Luciano Vincenzoni and Age & Scarpelli, based on a story by Leone and Vincenzoni.
Reviews were mixed at the time of the beloved Western’s release, with critics taking aim at Leone’s depiction of unmitigated violence. However, Leone intended to satirize the violence in Westerns and capture a realistic portrait of modern society. ”The West was made by violent, uncomplicated men, and it is this strength and simplicity that I try to recapture in my pictures,” he explained.
Of course, retrospectives have painted The Good, the Bad and the Ugly in a much better light over the decades. It boasts near-perfect scores on Rotten Tomatoes, sitting at 97% on the review aggregator’s Tomatometer and Popcornmeter.
Collider lauds the spaghetti Western as Leone’s magnum opus (one that holds up remarkably well), bolstered by compelling performances and “some of the most engrossing action scenes in the genre’s history.” Interestingly enough, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly was almost Leone’s final Western movie—until a few years later, when Leone’s favorite actor, Henry Fonda, came along, ushering in Once Upon a Time in the West.
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