This is the second movie in director Sergio Leone’s “Man with No Name” trilogy but Clint Eastwood actually does have a name in this story. He’s called Manco. This is the story of two bounty hunters. Manco (played by Eastwood) and Colonel Mortimer (played by Lee Van Cleef) are killing outlaws and collecting bounties when they meet up. After a contest to see whose marksmanship is better, they team up to take down “El Indio” and his gang. El Indio is a psychopathic killer whose gang has just broken him out of prison by killing all the guards and the warden. Indio has a pocket watch with a music box built into it. When he wants to have a shootout with someone he says, “Draw when the song ends.” And usually, he kills the opponent. But the song is so long and annoying I think most of the victims decide to die of gunshot wounds rather than live with the memory of the boredom of that song.
Indo is planning to rob the El Paso bank and Mortimer convinces Manco to join Indio’s gang and act as the inside man to allow Mortimer and Manco to finish off the gang. The plan sort of works. Manco manages to kill three of Indio’s men during a diversionary operation and Mortimer is able to gain Indio’s confidence too by helping Indo open the stolen safe using powerful acid to dissolve the lock.
But when Manco and Mortimer try to steal the bank money from Indio they are caught and beaten savagely in advance of their deaths. Then a bunch of weird stuff happens that has Indo and some of his lieutenants murdering each other to increase their share of the loot. As part of this plan Indio allows for Manco and Mortimer to escape and they finish off killing the gang. By the finale it’s just Manco, Mortimer and Indio. This sets up the duel between Indio and Mortimer. We discover that Indio murdered Mortimer’s brother-in-law then raped his sister causing her to commit suicide. The musical watch was stolen by Indio from the sister. With a little help from Manco the duel is run fairly and Indio is killed. Then Mortimer tells Manco that he can have all the bounties for Indio and the rest of the gang. Mortimer just walks away, apparently finishing his stint as a bounty hunter and Manco loads the bodies on a wagon and takes the bank’s money along too. It’s not at all clear whether he is going to return the money, which is much more than the bounties on the gang, or keep it.
This is a very enjoyable action film. Eastwood and Van Cleef shoot a lot of bad guys. The bank heist is a good chapter and little touches throughout the story keep the audience’s interest throughout. There are several very humorous situations between the “partners” including a scene where Mortimer proves to Manco that a long-barreled gun trumps a Colt .45 even if the pistolero is the fastest draw around.
Indio is such a despicable psychopath that making his death the climax of the movie seems like a reasonable scenario. But unfortunately, the whole musical watch thing is just too annoying. It happens I think three times and by the finale I just wanted Mortimer to shoot Indio as soon as the watch started playing and then shoot the watch just to end the torture.
I think this second installment in the trilogy is even better than the first (A Fistful of Dollars). Van Cleef is a welcome addition to the atmosphere providing a sort of older brother for the Eastwood character.
Highly recommended.