Details: Released in 1964. About an hour and forty minutes long. Directed by Sergio Leone. Stars Clint Eastwood, Gian Maria Volontè, Marianne Koch.
Of the three Sergio Leone westerns, I’d say The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly is the best, For A Few Dollars More is the worst, and A Fistful of Dollars is in the middle. This is a good movie and has a lot of what I enjoyed from The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, except they fit it into an hour and forty minute run-time versus a three hour run-time.
Details: Released in 1965. Over two hours long. Directed by Sergio Leone. Stars Clint Eastwood, Lee Van Cleef, Gian Maria Volontè.
My favorite movie of all time is The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, which is another spaghetti western from Sergio Leone. For a movie so old, I was blown away by how contemporary it was… and how much it was like shounen anime. There’s this constant question about whose the strongest and hyper-machismo and other common anime themes. For a Few Dollars More is another film from the Sergio Leone spaghetti western trilogy and I finally decided to sit down and watch it in its entirety.
For a Few Dollars More is a story about two bounty hunter who are trying to catch a gang of killers and thieves. It’s not as good as The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, but it’s okay. It’s got the same tone and two of the same actors. There’s also your genre familiar gun fights, machismo, and standoffs.
Overall, I enjoyed it, but I think it could be skipped. It didn’t keep my attention too well.
Score: 6.4/10
Details: Released in 2016. Over two hours long. Stars Denzel Washington, Chris Pratt, and Ethan Hawke.
If you’ve seen trailer for this movie, then you should have a pretty good idea what this movie is going to be. The Magnificent Seven is a remake of an older movie of the same name, which was a movie that took heavy inspiration from the classic Akira Kurosawa film, Seven Samurai.
The premises for all these movies is the same: a town is beset by wrongdoing from a group of bad guys. The town takes all their possessions and go out and hire seven men to help defend the village and defeat the bad guys.
While this movie is unlikely to win any Oscars, I greatly enjoyed the movie. It’s your standard Western, remade with modern stars. Most recognizable are Denzel Washington, Chris Pratt, Ethan Hawke, and Vincent D’Onfrio. This isn’t there best work, but they are good and help sell the movie.
The story is your classic underdog facing impossible odds story. I have a weakness for these kinds of stories and as such, I enjoyed this story very much. It doesn’t get more courageous to me than seven bad guys in a bad world putting their lives on the line for a town that has nothing to do with them, to risk their lives for the principle of protecting others. I know it’s a cliche story, but I can’t help getting choked up when being told this specific type of story. There’s a lot of familiar Western action here, which isn’t bad a thing.
Overall, a good movie with some good Western action. If you like Westerns, I recommend it.
Score: 6.7/10
Muse Bank 