Thursday, December 13, 2007

The Good, The Bad and The Ugly by Sergio Leone

Sergio Leone's The Good, The Bad and The Ugly is one of those films that is technically a "genre" film but seems to transcend genre to create something iconic for generations. Clint Eastwood stars in the final installment of the "No Name Trilogy" that made Eastwood and Leone both icons of the Spaghetti Western. The film relies on visual stimulation much more than verbal, in fact, there is not a word spoken for the first 15 minutes of the film - not quite the 25 minutes of Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey that same year, but impressive none-the-less. This may not be the best Western, or the best Leone film, or Eastwood's best...but there is something about it that goes out in front of time, space, good and bad and proves that the second or third best in several categories eventually allows you to catch up in total score. And, for better or for worse Sergio Leone's picture is truly a tale of the good, the bad and the ugly. AND it innovated the, now Western cliche, Mexican Standoff.

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