Tag: movie review

Rio Bravo (1959) – A Movie Review

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“Rio Bravo” is supposed to have been made in reaction to the movie “High Noon.”  In that movie Gary Cooper is a sheriff who can’t find any townsmen to help him stand against an outlaw gang gunning for him.  Howard Hawks and John Wayne were so affronted by what they saw as the whiny, “woe is me” feel of that movie they decided to make Rio Bravo as an alternative.  Wayne would play the sheriff but with no angst.  Basically, he refuses to deputize a large number of civilians to stand down a gang of outlaws who threaten to kill the sheriff if he doesn’t release the gang leader’s brother.

Wayne is Sheriff John T. Chance.  His sometimes deputy but mostly just alcoholic friend is Dude, played by Dean Martin.  They’re joined in their desperate but light hearted stand by Stumpy, a gimpy and hot-tempered old man played by Walter Brennan and Colorado, a resourceful young cowboy with a fast gun hand and a guitar played by Ricky Nelson.  And finally, Angie Dickinson is a professional gambler who will be the love interest for Chance.  For whatever reason the only name we’re given for her is Feathers.

The setup is as follows.  While involved in an altercation with Dude in the saloon Joe Burdette (played by Claude Akins) kills a man.  Chase arrests Joe and has Stumpy keep guard over him basically for the duration of the movie.  Meanwhile an old friend of Chance’s, Pat Wheeler (played by Ward Bond) arrives in town with his crew and supplies.  When he hears what is going on with Chance, he offers his associate Colorado as a deputy to help Chance hold off the Burdette gang that numbers in the dozens.  Chance declines because he doesn’t want to involve Wheeler in the trouble.  But Wheeler is murdered that night.  After some back and forth in which members of the gang take Chance and Dude hostage more than once, Colorado comes aboard as a deputy.

As a side story Feathers arrives in town to play poker in the saloon but when a wanted poster shows up that seems to implicate her as a card cheat Chance tells her to leave town.  But Colorado defends her saying that another player in the game was cheating.  After catching the cheater with several aces up his sleeve, Feathers tells her side of the story.  The poster was about her and her late husband.  He had gotten into a crooked card game and paid for his crime with his life.  For the rest of the movie whenever Chance and Feathers are together, they maintain an odd and annoying sort of awkward bickering cum flirting.

Meanwhile the climax of the movie arrives when Dude is taken hostage by Burdette’s gang and they demand a swap of Joe for Dude.  The transfer involves the two men crossing a clearing in opposite directions.  Joe is walking away from the barn where Chance, Colorado and Stumpy are holed up and Dude is walking away from the commercial building where the whole Burdette gang is arrayed.  But when they reach each other in the middle Dude tackles Joe and forces him into some cover that is somehow much closer to Chance’s building than Burdette’s.  After subduing Joe, Chance and his deputies begin a lively gun battle with Burdette’s gang.  Eventually Chance’s side gets ahold of some dynamite and he does some fancy shooting to set off the explosives as Stumpy hurls it across the clearing toward the Burdette building.  And finally Stumpy ties several sticks together and the final explosion takes most of the building down and the surviving gang members stumble out of the wreckage and surrender.

All that remains is for Chance and Feathers to complete their awkward courtship and declare their weird and annoying love.

So, this is a strange movie.  It’s part western, part buddy movie and I guess a love story.  Mixed into this is the fact that Dean Martin and Ricky Nelson are allowed to sing a few songs.  I know I haven’t made it sound like a conventional western but the main story around the Burdettes is done extremely well, especially the action scenes.  Wayne, Martin, Brennan and Nelson make for a very interesting team.  I have seen this movie many times and still consistently enjoy this part of the plot.  Now as for the “love story” I don’t know what to say.  It’s just so out of place and unconvincing that I can’t even dislike it.  It’s just this bizarro incursion into an otherwise normal movie.  All I can do is hope that sometime in the future, technology will allow it to be excised from the movie.

I can highly recommend this to fans of westerns and John Wayne.  Even the songs were very much in the tradition of the Roy Rogers, singing cowboy style.  A good western.

Alien (1979) – A Science Fiction Movie Review

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I watched the movie Alien today for the first time since I saw it back in 1979.  Some things surprised me about the movie but the general impression is much as I remember it.  Luckily, the most annoying thing about the movie as I remembered it, the wildly varying sound levels used as a weapon against those with intact ear drums, was under my direct control thanks to the volume button.

I won’t give a detailed synopsis since everyone knows the plot.  I’ll describe it as follows.  An Earth space ship, the Nostromo, is travelling to Earth with a large cargo of ore.  The crew is awakened to investigate a message beacon coming from a nearby planetoid.  On it they find an ancient space ship with a long dead creature that seems to have died when something exploded out of its chest.  They discover a chamber that contains what look like eggs.  One of the eggs opens up and a crab-like creature smashes through the spacesuit helmet of one of the crew (played by John Hurt) and attaches itself to his face.  Later on, back at the ship the creature detaches from the crewman’s face and wanders off to die.  The crewman is seemingly unharmed but a few hours later a small somewhat humanoid creature erupts out of the crewman’s chest killing him.  The creature which is about a foot tall runs off into the ship and the crew goes on a search to find it and throw it out into space.

Somehow the creature increases in size until it’s about seven feet tall and spends the rest of the movie killing off the rest of the crew.  Finally, the only one left is Warrant Officer Ripley, played by Sigourney Weaver.  She sets the Nostromo to self-destruct and escapes on a shuttle craft.  But, of course, the alien is on the shuttle so she has to sneak into her space suit, open the air lock and shoot the alien with a grappling gun to push it out into space.  It manages to grab onto the engine so she ignites it thus ejecting the charcoal broiled alien into interstellar space.

The movie is a mixed bag.  The sets on the planetoid and the exterior shots of the Nostromo are beautifully done.  The interior shots of the Nostromo for the most part succeed in portraying a futuristic but gritty industrial environment.  I guess a combination of a tramp steamer and a star ship.  But one of the worst features of the movie is intentional.  Apparently, the designers and constructors of the ship ran out of light switches.  The whole movie takes place in the absence of light.  You can’t see a thing.  Sure, every once in a while, the monster’s jaws and its inner jaws start opening up and monster drool drips out but you never get to see the damned thing doing anything other than that.  And there’s a very good reason for that.  When all is said and done and all the marvelous CGI shots of the planetoid and the Nostromo are taken into account it’s still a movie with a guy in a rubber suit.  And that’s just not going to cut it.  So, most of the movie is just the crew running around in the dark waiting to scream when the monster bites them or injects them with an egg or whatever the hell it’s supposed to be doing when it catches them.

The actors do a creditable job with what they’re given.  In fact, most of them seem quite interesting and I wouldn’t mind watching a prequel where we see them interact while performing their duties as the crew of an interstellar ore freighter.  I’ll bet they could make such a movie fun and interesting with all kinds of adventures and sights.  But as monster fodder it’s a sort of limited palette.  Look left, look right, oops he’s behind you.  Look all around you, uh oh he’s hiding on the ceiling.  What this movie needed was a few Maglite flashlights.  Then they not only would have seen the monster but also beat it to death with the generous heft of the Maglite ML300L LED 6-Cell D Flashlight.

There was one really scary scene.  When Ripley escapes the Nostromo in the shuttle, before she discovers that the alien is in with her, she strips down to her skimpy underwear before entering the hibernation chamber.  And for the most part she seemed admirably contoured for a young woman thus attired but then she turned away from the camera and I discovered with horror that her butt was missing.  Instead of gluteus maximus she seemed to be suffering from a case of gluteus minimus.  What could have happened to her?  Did she lose her butt in some kind of industrial accident?  Did she donate it to someone else in the very rarely mentioned butt transplant surgery?  We may never know.  I still haven’t completely recovered from the shock.

Suffice it to say I have a mixed opinion on this movie.  If you think you could enjoy a poorly lit game of hide and seek with an interstellar menace then go for it.  You will see some nice visuals.  But watch out for Sigourney Weaver’s butt.  It’s truly shocking.

Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House (1948) – An OCF Classic Movie Review

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Cary Grant is Jim Blandings and Myrna Loy is his wife, Muriel.  Along with their two adolescent daughters they live in a cramped Manhattan apartment.  Muriel has been secretly planning to remodel the apartment with an architect for an estimated cost of $7,000.  When their friend Bill Cole (played by Melvyn Douglas) accidentally spills the beans in front of Jim he becomes outraged at spending so much money to continue living in such an unsuitable place.  He yearns to escape Manhattan and own a house out in the wide-open spaces of Connecticut.

The rest of the movie is a cautionary tale for any city dweller who contemplates becoming a rural homeowner.  Everything that can go wrong does and the combination of larcenous realtors and contractors and Jim and Muriel’s ignorance about building a house drive them to the edge of bankruptcy, unemployment and divorce.

Cary Grant, Myrna Loy and Melvyn Douglas were three of the best actors Hollywood ever produced for the kind of light comedy this picture represents.  And the script writers provided them with plenty of scenes where they could fill out the characters they were playing.  Grant is the perfect harried husband.  He is constantly outguessed by his wife and hectored by his progressive-school-educated daughters.  His boss has given him an impossible assignment at work and every penny he ever saved has gone out the window building this house.  Myrna Loy is her usual sparkling self.  She is the dutiful wife but there is always a jaundiced eye and very often a sarcastic comment when Jim steers them off a cliff.  And Melvyn Douglas is the pessimistic lawyer friend warning them at every turn to abandon this fool’s errand and head back to the city.  He also becomes the object of Jim’s jealous suspicions when he always seems to be giving Muriel a kiss on the cheek whenever he leaves.  And when his daughters read in their mother’s diary that Muriel had been in love with Bill back in college Jim feels that his suspicions are justified.

This all sounds like a ridiculous movie.  And it is.  But it also represents a comical take on the experience of millions of Americans who fled the cities for the suburbs after World War II.  And the three stars of the film make the whole experience pleasant, funny and warm-hearted.  I can highly recommend this movie as an entertaining hour and a half.  I especially recommend it for a husband and wife who have bought their first home.  They’ll spend half the time nodding their heads in commiseration at the trials and tribulations of the Blandings and the other half laughing.

It! The Terror from Beyond Space – A Science Fiction Movie Review

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I’ll give the plot of this movie in a very short synopsis.  The first manned trip to Mars ends with all but one of the ten-man-crew dead.  A rescue mission takes survivor, Col. Carruthers aboard to bring him back for a court martial for his alleged murder of his crew mates.  On the voyage home they discover that a Martian creature who must have been the killer of the first crew is aboard and is now killing them.  The movie is mostly about the crew’s attempt to kill the monster before he finishes them all off.

Alright, how do I hate this movie, let me count the ways.

  • The special effects consist of a big guy in a rubber monster suit, a couple of rooms outfitted with ship’s ladders and fake metal bulkhead hatches, really bad fake spacesuits, some star backgrounds with comets and meteors moving by every once in a while, and a model of a space ship. That’s it.
  • The script is seriously underwhelming. During the first quarter of the film most of the dialog is the crew taunting Carruthers trying to goad him into confessing to the murder of his crewmates.  After the monster comes on the scene all they do is walk around the small sets whining about how nothing they do seems to affect the monster and bemoaning the death of their shipmates.
  • On the second mission to Mars they brought girls! Sure, sure, I know, they’re nurses or something.  They’re always putting a bandage on Carruthers or an IV bottle on “Van.”  But they even had to start up a love triangle between the less homely nurse and Carruthers and Van.  Even in the face of imminent death at the hands (or three fingered claws) of “It!” we still have to endure hand holding and soul-searching looks into each other’s eyes.
  • The monster is ridiculous. Its face hands and feet are so obviously latex rubber that it’s embarrassing.  When he catches any of the crew, he pummels the victim by windmilling his ridiculous arms.  According to more homely nurse this treatment breaks every bone in the victim’s body.  But remarkably the victim isn’t killed.  Instead, the monster stows them in the ventilation system where they are retrieved so that the monster can suck the water and oxygen from their bodies.  Also, the monster sounds like he has asthma.
  • The movie is only 68 minutes long. Now normally that would be a fault.  But in this case brevity is a great virtue.

After failing to kill the monster with bullets, grenades, poison gas and bazooka they finally settle on emptying the ship’s atmosphere into space thus asphyxiating him.  They make a big deal of the fact that the monster has large lungs because of the thin atmosphere on Mars.  Why that would make him more vulnerable to asphyxia I couldn’t possibly say.  And once the air is all gone, he quickly expires as did my patience.

The fairly familiar character actors in this movie like Marshall Thompson and Dabbs Greer had an impossible task to make this turkey watchable.  It’s not as awful as ‘Plan Nine from Outer Space” so it can’t be watched for laughs.  It’s just schlock.  Unless you really enjoy bad old sci-fi, I recommend giving this one a pass.

Sherlock Holmes – A Game of Shadows (2011) – A Movie Review

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This sequel to the previously reviewed 2009 movie “Sherlock Holmes” has actors Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law returning as Sherlock Holmes and Dr. John Watson.  And Rachel McAdams, Kelly Reilly, Geraldine James and Eddie Marsan also reprise their roles as, respectively, Irene Adler, Mary Watson, Mrs. Hudson and Inspector Lestrade.

The plot of this movie is once again an original story but it does add in elements from one particular Arthur Conan Doyle story namely, the “The Adventure of the Final Problem.”  This is the story in which Arthur Conan Doyle arranges the final showdown between Holmes and his nemesis Professor Moriarty.  And this story covers what was in the written story but adds much more in the way of motivation for the duel to the death between Holmes and Moriarty.  And the writers manage to link the story to the greater reality of this time period.  They tie Moriarty’s evil plot to the actual fact that in 1900 Europe is on the precipice of World War.  The movie even has Moriarty explicitly chide Holmes with the bitter reality that even if he eliminates Moriarty, it still will not stop the coming war.

I’m happy to say that the dash and humor from the first movie are on clear display in this second film.  The camaraderie between Holmes and Watson are undiminished even after Dr. Watson finally marries Mary.  In fact, the occasion of the honeymoon provides one of the most comical scenes in the movie with Holmes dressed as a woman attempting to save the newlyweds from imminent death on a train packed with assassins.

I won’t attempt to synopsize the plot.  It would sound like nonsense and I refuse to spoil the details of the plot.  Suffice it to say that Holmes and Watson traipse across Europe attempting to catch up to the plot that Moriarty has set in motion.  And Jared Harris who portrays Professor James Moriarty is a great villain.

As with the preceding movie I have the highest praise for this film.  All the principal parts are brilliantly acted.  I highly recommend it to anyone who enjoys a well-made entertainment film.  And just to add an interesting note, ten years after this movie the producers have finally had the opportunity to film another sequel.  I look forward to that movie with great anticipation.

Sherlock Holmes (2009) – A Movie Review

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Guy Ritchie directed this 2009 update of the Sherlock Holmes legend but instead of re-doing one of the Arthur Conan Doyle stories he re-imagined the characters and wrote a screenplay that gives a sort of steam punk feel to the outing.  Robert Downey Jr. is Holmes and Jude Law is his partner in crime detection and chronicler, Dr. Watson.  On the face of it these two men would seem to be completely miscast in these roles.  But nothing could be further from the truth.  The script combines equal parts comedy and action adventure.  And both Downey and Law play the parts as if they were born to the roles.  The bickering friendship that they portray is as important a part of the movie as the nefarious doings of the evil Lord Blackwood and the barely glimpsed Professor Moriarty.

The plot involves the resurrection from the dead of a hanged man, Lord Blackwell who engaged in satanic rituals and is linked to a powerful masonic secret society in London.  All sorts of strange goings on have baffled Inspector Lestrade of Scotland Yard and with the sometimes assistance, sometimes sabotage by Holmes’ femme fatale, Irene Adler and the reluctant presence of Watson’s fiancée, Mary Morstan, they pursue the truth behind the unbelievable return from the dead of Lord Blackwell and discover and attempt to foil his devious plot to gain control of the world.

I am a fan of the Sherlock Holmes stories and I’ve watched all the previous cinematic versions, the Basil Rathbone movies and the Jeremy Brett series by Granada Television.  I don’t take anything away from these older series but what Guy Ritchie has created is a new and highly entertaining take on the characters.  You can probably tell that I am highly enthusiastic about this film and the also excellent sequel.  The chemistry that Downey and Law have on the screen is marvelously entertaining and must be a combination of their acting skills and the truly excellent script and direction.

I wholeheartedly recommend this movie to fans of Sherlock Holmes, to action-adventure fans and to movie fans of all stripes.  Find it and watch it.

The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm (1962) – A Science Fiction and Fantasy Movie Review

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Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm were brothers who studied German language and folklore during the 18th and 19th centuries.  They are best remembered by people today for their collection of German fairy tales.  And this movie is a fanciful story of the two brothers struggling to find a paying audience for their talents.  Wilhelm is presented as the idealist spending all his time collecting folktales from old women while his brother Jacob attempts to keep their heads above water by slaving away at tedious but paying work such as writing the family history of the local duke.

And interspersed with the story of the brothers are the fairy tale sequences of the film which correspond to three of the stories that Wilhelm hears from his sources.  They are versions of, “The Dancing Princess,” “The Cobbler and the Elves” and “The Singing Bone.”  In each case a different cast of actors portray the action.  And even though this is a German/American production there are some familiar American and British actors sprinkled in the cast.  Jim Backus, Claire Bloom, Beulah Bondi, Terry Thomas, Buddy Hackett and Barbara Eden are among the more well-known cast members.

The story about the brothers reaches its crisis when Wilhelm loses the draft of the duke’s family history in a river while rushing back from hearing a story in a “witch’s” cottage.  Jacob storms off vowing never to work with Wilhelm again.  The duke vows to prosecute Wilhelm if he doesn’t recompense him for the free home provided Wilhelm and his family during the unsuccessful project.  And simultaneously Wilhelm becomes seriously ill with pneumonia.  But hearing of Wilhelm’s dire straits Jacob sells his private library and uses the money to save Wilhelm.  Afterwards they continue on together with Jacob writing scholarly works on German philology and Wilhelm publishing his stories.  Eventually the king has the brothers nominated for the Prussian Royal Academy but the citation only includes Jacob’s scholarly works as cause for the nomination.  Saddened, Wilhelm still congratulates Jacob for the honor they will both be given.  But when they reach Berlin, the train is met by thousands of children cheering for Wilhelm to “tell them a story.”  And he starts off, “There once lived two brothers.”

I saw this movie as child when the nuns at my grammar school called an assembly in the gymnasium and played it to reward us for not burning down the school that year.  There was an unfortunate incident before the film.  A very good friend of mine, one of the most naturally talented comics I’ve ever known but who had extremely poor impulse control got in trouble for mouthing off to the principal, Sister Theodore.  She pulled him out of line and after a little back and forth dialog she slapped him in the face.  Unfortunately for his school career he slapped her back and added a few loud and obscene remarks.  Unsurprisingly he was expelled.  And the diversion made us pay less attention to the movie than we might have otherwise done.

But I remember from back then that it was an amusing movie.  And a recent viewing confirms that opinion.  The fairy tale sequences are played in a broad, very comical style.  Whereas the story of the brothers is in a dramatic style that chronicles the difficulty of trying to earn a living at a dull task when your heart is somewhere else.  Being a dreamer myself, may be why I’m so sympathetic with Wilhelm’s plight.

I’m not sure who I would recommend this movie for.  It’s not really a children’s story but I think many children might like it.  As for adults, it might be too primitive for people brought up on CGI special effects.  Maybe it’s only for old folks like me who are still young at heart.

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (1945) – An OCF Classic Movie Review

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“A Tree Grows in Brooklyn” tells the story of the Nolan family.  Johnny and Katie and their two school age children Francie and Neeley are a poor family living in Williamsburg Brooklyn and the story takes place close to the turn of the previous century (circa 1900).  Johnny is a singing waiter who lives for the day when his ship comes in but mostly, he drinks.  Katie makes the money that keeps the family alive by working as a cleaning woman in the tenement building they live in.  In several of the scenes we find her on her knees scrubbing the floors and staircases of the building.  Francie is a very smart and sensitive girl who wants to read every book in the library and grow up to be a writer.  She has a close relationship with her father who favors her love of learning and idealism.  This puts her in constant conflict with her level-headed mother who is determined to make her children successful by avoiding the “dreamy ideas” of her husband and teach them to work hard in life.  Neeley is a down to earth child of his environment and doesn’t suffer any angst over his downscale existence.  He has his mother’s temperament and rolls with the punches.

The movie tracks the downward trajectory of Johnny as he despairs of supporting his family.  But the one good thing he does for Francie is fake a move to another neighborhood that allows Francie to attend a much better public school than the one in her own neighborhood.  This opens her up to influences that teach her that in addition to enthusiasm a person has to “see the world as it really is.”

When Katie becomes pregnant, she tells Johnny that Francie will have to leave school to work to make up for Katie’s absence while she nurses the infant.  Johnny decides to do whatever it takes to save Francie from dropping out of school.  On Christmas Eve night he hears his daughter talk about the teacher who said that she must “see the world as it really is.”  And that resonates with his situation.  He must see himself as he really is.  He kisses her good night and walks out into the snow in his threadbare jacket and pants and goes looking for work as a sandhog for the burgeoning subway systems that were tunneling all over New York at that time.

Shortly after New Year Day the local police officer Mr. McShane comes to tell Katie that her husband is in a hospital in Manhattan having collapsed with pneumonia.  Shortly after she reaches him, he dies.  The funeral opens up Katie’s eyes as hundreds of Johnny’s friends pay their respects.  Her astonishment convinces Francie that her mother never understood her father and is a callous person.

Johnny’s friend, the local saloon owner Mr. Garrity, offers to let the two children work after school at his business setting up food for the free lunch.  Katie lets slip that she had decided that Francie would have had to quit school.  Hearing this Francie becomes truly embittered against her mother and fixes on the fact that letting her finish school had come once again through her father’s influence.  She accuses Katie of never having loved Johnny in life.

But the birth of the child at home forces Katie and Francie to bond and allows mother and daughter to see each other’s side of things.  With the help from the after-school jobs Francie and Neeley graduate grammar school and Katie predicts that the children will finish out high school too and go on to better than lives than their parents had.

And the movie has several other memorable characters.  Sissie who is Katie’s flirtatious sister and the scandal of the neighborhood is on her third husband.   Katie loves her but feels she is a bad influence on her children.  In each of Sissy’s earlier marriages her pregnancies ended in stillborn babies.  But a comment from Francie about the advantages of hospitals as a maternity setting, convinces Sissy to have her child in a hospital.  And the hospital uses oxygen to rouse the unresponsive new born.  And this probably saves Sissie’s present marriage.

Katie’s mother is a wise old woman who warns Katie against hardening her heart against the good things in life just because they don’t lead to monetary success.  And Officer McShane is a friend to Johnny, Katie and the children.  In several scenes he provides help to the family.  After Johnny’s death, he lets his intentions be known that he would like to court Katie.  Katie agrees and at that point even Francie is open to the idea.  So, the movie ends with Katie’s family finally able to cope with life in the modern world.

The cast does a phenomenal job.  Dorothy McGuire is Katie, Joan Blondell is Sissy, James Dunn is Johnny and Lloyd Nolan is Officer McShane.  And even some of the bit parts are memorable and splendidly acted.  The sets are evocative of Old Brooklyn and even mention of some of the place names still brings a smile to my face when I hear them in the movie.    Elia Kazan directed.

This is Camera Girl’s favorite movie of all time.  It speaks to her of families and it exhibits many of the qualities of life in Brooklyn that we still experienced two generations after the Nolan’s time.  I also think she identifies herself and me in the Nolans.  She as the hard-headed and hard-working woman and me as the ne’er do well but idealistic (and handsome and charming) husband.  But the one difference between myself and this Nolan guy is I was born lucky and he was born to fail.  But we watch this movie once or twice every year and we always end up feeling good.  Highly recommended for hard-working wives and lazy husbands.

The Good, The Bad and the Ugly (1966) – A Movie Review

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The Good, The Bad and the Ugly is the third movie in Sergio Leone’s “Man with No Name” trilogy.  As in the second movie, “For a Few Dollars More,” Lee Van Cleef joins Clint Eastwood.  And to round out the three eponymous characters we have Eli Wallach.  Clint Eastwood, Lee Van Cleef and Eli Wallach are the Good the Bad and the Ugly in that order.  Eastwood is a nameless bounty hunter and con-man.  Lee Van Cleef is a killer for hire that goes by the name of Angel Eyes.  And Eli Wallach is a Mexican criminal named Tuco.

Eastwood’s racket is to capture criminals for the bounty but when the town gets ready to hang the criminal Eastwood shoots the rope just in time allowing the criminal to escape and Eastwood then sells him all over again in the next town.  After several iterations of this Eastwood takes two shots to sever the rope and when Tuco complains about this treatment Eastwood dissolves the partnership leaving Tuco to walk seventy miles through the burning desert and swearing revenge.

Meanwhile Angel Eyes is helping a man locate some stolen army gold that was hidden by a man named Bill Carson.  But then he decides he’d rather keep the money for himself so he kills his client.  He finds out Carson is in the Confederate Army in Texas so he joins the Union forces and searches for Carson among the prisoners.

Tuco survives his trek through the desert and hunts down Eastwood or Blondie as he calls him.  Eventually he catches up with him and forces him to walk bareheaded in the desert until he is close to death.  But just at the point where Tuco prepares to shoot Blondie a Confederate stage coach filled with dead and dying men rolls up to Tuco and he finds Bill Carson dying but willing to tell him the whereabouts of the gold.  Carson tells him it’s buried in a certain graveyard but he withholds the name on the grave until he gets a drink of water.  But when Tuco gets back with the water he finds Carson dead and Blondie next to him.  Carson told him the name before he died.  Now Tuco brings Blondie to a Mexican mission for medical care for his sun stroke and the two men ride to find the gold.  But dressed in confederate uniforms they are captured by Union forces and taken to a prison camp.  By a coincidence Angel Eyes is at this camp and he knows Tuco and when he learns that he is pretending to be Bill Carson he has Tuco tortured to learn the location of the gold.  Tuco tells him the name of the cemetery and tells him that Blondie knows the grave name.

After several escapes and gunfights Tuco and Blondie escape from Angel Eyes and head for the cemetery.  On the way they run into a Union force that is waging a futile daily battle over possession of a bridge across a river.  Blondie is struck by the futility of all these men dying over a bridge that has no intrinsic value.  But it also occurs to him that as long as the bridge is there, they won’t be able to get past the Confederate forces to reach the cemetery so he dynamites the bridge and the two armies end the operation.

Finally, Tuco and Blondie reach the cemetery.  But before the gold can be dug up there is a three-way duel between Tuco, Angel Eyes and Blondie.  The form an equilateral triangle and blast away.  Blondie kills Angel Eyes and Tuco discovers that Blondie took the bullets out of his gun the night before.  So, Blondie reveals where the gold is buried and makes Tuco dig it up.  But while Tuco is rejoicing Blondie has set up a hangman’s noose over one of the grave crosses and force Tuco to climb onto the cross and put his neck in the noose.  After tying Tuco’s hands behind his back, Blondie leaves him suspended there and rides off with half the gold.  But when he’s half a mile away he takes his rifle and shoots the rope and Tuco is freed to scream epithets at Blondie as he rides away.

This is the most entertaining movie of the trilogy.  Although technically Tuco is as much a hardened criminal as Angel Eyes he manages to become a somewhat sympathetic villain probably because of the large dose of comic relief he adds to the film.  Angel Eyes is the sadistic villain but he also is an interesting portrayal by Van Cleef.  And Eastwood’s character is, as always, resourceful, cool under fire and damn lucky.  This movie is highly recommended for fans of westerns and action-adventure films.  And it has a fantastic main theme song.

Guest Contributor – War Pig – Favorite Westerns

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My favorite western is Once Upon A Time In The West, followed by True Grit/ Rooster Cogburn (I consider them to be part one and two of a whole story), followed by Eastwood’s spaghetti trio. After that I like western comedies such as the Trinity movies with Terrence Hill and sometimes Bud Spencer. Blazing Saddle is a joy but could not be made today. Honorable mention goes to Quigley Down Under as it is set in Australia, and besides Selleck as the protagonist, it has an absolutely smashing musical score. I grew up watching westerns on TV and at the drive in. Roy and Dale. Lash LaRue, Rin Tin Tin, Sky King, Gene Autry, Gabby Hayes, Cisco and Poncho, you name it. I even belonged to the Rin Tin Tin fan club.