movie review - Fistful of Dollars
the journal of Michael Werneburg
twenty-seven years and one million words
This is a movie made in Spain in the 1960s but set in the US-Mexico frontier in the 1890s. Kinda crazy to think that almost as much time has passed since the movie was made as that initial difference! But I digress, and that's not usually a good start to one of my 'reviews'.
Made in Spain to allow its US star to bypass his domestic contractual obligations, and with a script lifted from a recent Kurosawa movie, it's really quite an international affair and feels somehow more modern than it is. With a superb score, a spare set, a terrific cast, and of course a story derived from possibly the greatest film-maker of the 20th Century, it's an engaging little tale that kicks off with a stranger watching two thugs shoot at a four-year-old and basically never lets up. The stranger turns out to be a manipulative and daring sociopath who will blackmail, murder, lie, and cheat to make that fistful of dollars. But when he finds himself in over his head he learns a thing or two and we see him come to some quick realizations and to a certain extent change his ways.
It helps enormously that the people he's up against are actually worse than he is, and in some ways far more dangerous than his one-man death-dealing. I mean, when one party is willing to pose as the army of one nation while wiping out a regiment from the other, you're dealing with a different level of desperation and destruction.
You don't really find yourself cheering for our anti-hero until that heel-face turn, and even then you don't really see his final act of altruism coming until it does. And even then, you don't understand that act, given all that we've seen, until the final line of dialog in the movie.
Seeing this with my son on our wide TV and with our modest soundbar blasting that score was a treat. Strongly recommended.