Set phasers to "grandpa" as Rich and Jay talk about a stuffy old Western. Or is it????? It's The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly...one of the most famous and influential movies ever made, and it was done by some weird Italian guy.
“Go full boomer, watch a western” I watched Fistful of Dollars earlier this year and the plot was so tight and simple yet atmospheric and entertaining, it was better than anything I’d seen that past year I swear
The thing is you don't have to go full boomer to watch any of these old classics, all people have to do is just put them on they're really that good. especially if people are still wowed by them 40-70 years after they drop.
I have not seen that movie but from seeing the clips in this video it looks like the story might be the copy of the Japanese film made by kurosawa, the name I think is yojimbo I'm not sure.
@@amitmeena2961 The first movie of the "trilogy", A Fistful of Dollars, is a remake of Yojimbo. A Few Dollars More and GBU aren't remakes. You should definitely watch them, they are all amazing, especially GBU.
3:01 goddamn did I feel the joy in rich's heart when jay said "one of the best things I have ever seen" I felt the joy in my heart as well because this film really is beautiful!!
Lol, same here. I remember thinking that westerns were lame, but when I watched this at the age of 16 or so, it really kicked off my love of westerns. I went on a HUGE western binge after watching this.
I never appreciated westerns until I played through the 1st red dead redemption. After that I fell in love with the genre. Good bad ugly is in my top 3 fave movies.
@@TrempBoy2It’s a film that WILL convert the haters. Also UNFORGIVEN (another Eastwood masterpiece)… I know nothing about the early westerns other than the fact that they seemed boring as sh*t when I caught them on late night television as a child. I had no interest in westerns until I saw Once Upon A Time In The West in my early 20s. I was instantly drawn in and I’ve become a Leone fan ever since. Every film I watched blew me away, and the ones I didn’t immediately connect with became some of my favorites upon a second viewing (Once Upon A Time In America!!!)….
It's pretty much top 3 films of all time if you understand the art of film making and the scope and talent. Maybe number 2. Possibly #1. It's potentially the greatest film art ever made but their are films with better scores so it loses an infinitesimal point. To top 2 or 3.
That is what you call great acting, if anybody can play as anybody e.g. Robert Downey Jr. as Kirk Lazarus: An Australian method actor and five-time Academy Award winner, Lazarus had a controversial "pigmentation alteration" surgery to temporarily darken his skin for his portrayal of the black character, Staff Sergeant Lincoln Osiris, in Tropic Thunder a really funny movie.
@@jedi_drifter2988 that movie sucks! It's not funny at all! I kind of laughed ONE TIME at Tom Cruise telling the kidnappers to "go fuck yourself"! Stupid bullshit for the braindead masses!... kind of like Star Wars now
Tuco has one of the greatest character introduction scenes in cinema. Literally bursting onto the scene (through a glass) after killing three bad looking men with a turkey leg in one hand (and half in his mouth), and a gun in the other. And then that freeze frame lmao. Just great filmmaking
Also did wonders for showing that as scruffy and goofy as he is compared to the other two, he is sharper than is given credit for. Has some real madcap ideas when he gets the drop on someone like getting some guys together just to see them all get killed while he came from the window or how he had a gun good and ready while he was bathing hiding under some bubbles. Takes the most punishment out of the 3 and still ends up in better shape than....well, bad.
See, I was gonna say Clint Eastwood's introduction where it shows him talking shit to a guy before sending him to his death (or so he thinks) once he's no longer profitable, and then having the entire movie freeze to label him "the good" is perfect for setting the tone for the world this movie exists in
@@motherplayer pretty sure that's exactly the point Leone was making with the whole movie-"it may not be pretty, but it gets the job done". Tuco is unrefined and clueless, but he pulls through every single time because he's got no illusions of being above shit. He'll cheat, he'll fight, he'll grovel, he'll beg-but he won't accept defeat. He's not good, he's not bad, and he certainly isn't handsome-but in the end, he's alive and no worse-off than he started.
The number of times Jay says, "I loved it," throughout this re:View is awesome. It's a film everyone has heard of and is widely praised, but it still managed to exceed his expectations. You can tell how genuinely happy he is to sit down and talk about it with Rich. And now I'm looking forward to watching it myself thanks to this video.
Weird how you take pop culture references of a classic film for surface value of the whole film your whole life, but when you actually watch the movie you realize it's meme holds up so long because the movie itself is amazing and more than the reference you took for granted. I'm just as guilty, but I was surprised to find out Jay, a well known picky film snob that enjoys good and bad Italian knock offs, NEVER SAW The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly. Everyone has their flaws, he just corrected one of his on (RU-vid) camera.
It's as good as they say. The other ones (Fistful of Dollars & A Few Dollars More) are great too. The recent HD versions look fantastic too, including MGM's 2014 restoration made from the original camera negative. Can't go wrong with these suckers!
@@jamesgreenwood5185 I should've said it in my original comment - but I'm actually excited to see this whole trilogy. Had to catch up on some other films before I could jump in so I still haven't - top of my list though.
I first saw this on my little 14" bedroom black and white TV in 1988 when I was 13 - it was the Sunday matinee on a local TV station, and it's been in my top 10 ever since. I had it playing in the background on a projector at my bachelor party in 2006 and everyone stopped drinking and talking and sat down to watch the whole thing & we had to get the sound going. My boys are 14 and 12 now, wondering if I show it to them, will they just be bored, or will it capture them like it did me?
When I was 10, my grandfather found out that I hadn't seen this movie... he literally drove to buy it and brought me home to make me watch it. My grandfather was awesome!
My aunt did me the same why when It came to Star Wars back in 99…. She lost her shit and ran straight to blockbuster and got all the OT… I was only 6 ma’am calm down 😂…. But because of her I love movies
Jay missed the point of the bridge scene. Yeah they blow it up cos it's in thier way out it's also a small favour to the dying union captain, who has seen thousands of men die for nothing. He gets a little bit of hope just before he dies. So it was a small heroic moment.
It also allows the two armies to disperse, as there's nothing left to fight for. Which means there won't be anyone else going to the cemetery when they go to look for the gold.
Oh yeah. It's character building for Blondie. After he almost dies from thirst and exposure, he starts doing little nice things, here and there, the first of which is sharing his cigar with Tuco as they leave the mission.
It's almost like this movie was ...well written? All the characters have layers and even growth(well..maybe aside from Angel Eyes, he is pretty much an horrible pos the entire movie, but he also has a couple of interesting moments). Another scene is the one between Tuco and his brother. While it's true that the brother is disappointed in Tuco, what Tuco says is the truth: the only way to escape poverty for them was either being a bandit or donning the cloth. It just so happens Tuco was the tougher and meanest of their family, so he left to be a bandit and not burden the others. He made difficult choices, at a very young age. The brother had the easiest path. It's also the moment Tuco discovers his mother died, now he is TRULY alone. There's no home to go back, no one will be waiting for him. We see under his tough skin a little glimpse of what was a little mexican boy from a poor village, still ashamed to tell Blondie his brother wasn't pleased to meet him. Still sad about what happened. Tuco is a terrible man, but also has an heart. It's a scene that grounds him and makes him " real". He isn't just a "cigar smoking bandito" that is convenient to the plot, he actually has a place in the world. Like i said, good writing.
I also think it's a very ironic scene, that these two lowlife bandits end up saving the lives of thousands of men. For me, it's all part of the epic character of this film. Vast landscapes cut with extreme close-ups, soaring operatic music interjected by long silences, a sweeping civil war punctuated by the petty rivalry and squabbling of the characters... This movie isn't just pure cinema, it's the entire human condition, grand and yet trivial, tragic and absurd.
For Tuco's revolver: it's plausible, but takes to explaining. He picked a bunch of era appropriate revolvers to start with and all of the ones he took apart and swapped around were manufactured by Colt. And the specific parts he swapped around were ones that were either designed to be taken apart and changed (such as cylinders) or ones that could work well if you didn't think too hard about it. But the real point of the scene is to show that Tuco actually knows what he's doing, he essentially picks the best parts from all of the Colts on offer. It's a very impressive scene.
Similar concept with a lot of modern firearms, ie the AR-15. There are many forms of it with different interchangable parts, ie barrels, receivers, grips, stocks, etc. Take ten of them that all look different, and you can make one amalgamation of them because they're the same underlying system.
Fun fact: Wallach didn't know anything about guns. Leone just told him to improvise and they'd edit whatever they got. Assembling Tuco's pistol was a complete accident - thankfully because the prop guy had selected a bunch of Colt knockoffs. If you look, the worried looks on his face were 100% genuine - he thought he was messing up a bunch of props and they wouldn't even be able to use it.
Lee van Cleef was indeed a very sweet man. He lost part of his middle finger building a doll house for his daughter. You can see it in the close up of his hand in the duel scene.
That is the most wholesome story.... until you realize that somehow a dollhouse set was dangerous enough to take a man's finger off during assembly. They don't make children's toys like they used to I guess.
@@The0spetsnaz0 It wasn't a plastic kit from WalMart. He was building it from raw material, which means hammers, saws and lathes were involved. This is the standard practice (and danger) of building any object that requires skill and craft, and not just assembling some shit you got from Amazon.
He was also one of those bygone-era gentlemen, who couldn't even feign hitting a woman...so they had to put a man in a dress for him to finish the scene where Angel Eyes roughs up a prostitute.
That union/reb dust gag scene is still one of my all-time favorite jokes in any movie, I remember watching it for the first time when I was twelve and laughing my ass off.
Tuco: Hurrah! Hurrah for the Confederacy! HURRAH! Down with General Grant! Hurrah for General... What's his name? Lee! LEE! Ha ha. God is with us because he hates the Yanks too. HURRAH! Blondie: God is not on our side because he hates idiots also.
All these people who watched these movies as kids, it makes you wonder why George Lucas tried to water the OT down, seeing that the original take of the Han vs. Greedo scene was based on these movies, but for some reason Lucas thinks that kids only watch babies' movies.
@@white-dragon4424 It has nothing to do with movies, remember George own the rights to the toys, until a point where the toys profit probably exceeded his box office profits. In the original trilogy he collaborated with many talented because he's making a movie, but for the prequels he's making toys. It's probably the reason he started to call Star Wars a kids movie.
The funny thing about the cynical Civil War take is that kind of stuff really was happening. I was looking at a Time Life photo book of the Civil War a long time and one of the stories they tell (and show) is that the most famous (and one of the most prolific) CW photographers was exposed after people started to notice that a lot of his photos had the same corpses in them. He was dragging and posing bodies on the battlefield.
@@illseeyaonthedarksideofthemoon - Well yeah but in the case of the civil war one side went out of their way to start the war specifically to uphold the institution of slavery so like fuck em
@@851852093114208513no, the Corwin Amendment was meant to stop that. It wasn’t solely to preserve the institution. The north still had 5 slave states during the war and even after the emancipation proclamation. The largest hanging event was in New York when the people of NYC heard that the war was about freeing blacks… it was a war of grievances than actual humanitarian cause. Look up Charles Adams’s book “When in the Course of Human Events: Making the Case for Southern Succession”. The book discusses tax history coming from the author who majors in the topic and shows the US aggression via tariffs. The only thing the North did was further create a divide in the south. Because of Sherman hatred was brewed, because of the removal of citizenship from everyone in the south the statues were built, carpetbaggers stole land, and even the kkk came about as militia groups in protest of the north later turned into a racially focused white supremacist group that even Nathan Bedford Forest protest and left. I have no skin in the Civil War game as I have no ancestors here, but to treat the war like a football match, dehumanizing the opposite side to fit one’s own narrative is quite bizarre. If the 3% were the only people in the CSA to hold slaves then they must’ve had the dumbest civilians to convince them that preservation of slavery is a valid war. Robert E Lee even freed his own at the start of the war… you know the guy whose 5 family members signed the Declaration of Independence and whose father was Virginia’s governor? I don’t like erecting false idols but the statues are reminders of the hatred and yet it is seen as offensive… History will repeat itself with the current divide of the modern peoples as you hear the new anti-Semite, anti-Ukraine, anti-black rhetoric being talked about on controlled opposition media. It’s clear we are seen as sheep to be herded off of cliffs of party affiliations and social political opinions. First world problems that have no relevance to the famine, wars, and tensions of quarreling nations. Goodbye
I'm going to go against the grain and be earnest here: Rich you're really good at what you do. There's a reason you can spin out 80s plots at will, and it's because you approach material like a writer, which is a valuable perspective. You're insightful and smart and I'm glad your job is this rather than delivering telephone books or whatever the weird shit you used to do is. So enjoy the compliments you'll never read from a person you'll never meet.
@@jayjaydeth , yep, went to high school with Mike, then Mike went to film school and Rich entered a trade. But Rich was the one out of the job when the recession hit, so he went to Mike in desperation.
I met Eli Wallach while I was in grad school. He was a lovely human being. He said that for the longest time he thought that he was the "bad" of the trio.
When I first saw this film I honestly believed that Eli was in fact a Mexican actor. I don't know how he does it but he was a lovable bandit in this film. He's a total degenerate but for some reason you love him.
Fun fact! All the revolvers Tuco disassembled were different versions of the same Colt revolver. The parts he exchanged, the cylinder and barrel, would have been more or less interchangeable, and were only held together with removable pins. Overall not too inaccurate!
It was totally inaccurate though. It 100% wouldn’t work. That scene is fantastic as a piece of cinema, but not realistic at all, and absolutely would not work. Tuco supposedly loads brass cartridges in a cap-and-ball (Colt Navy) Pistol that he swaps cylinders with a Smith & Wesson. You can’t do that. A Colt Navy, being cap-and-ball, loads from the front. The movie is set in 1862-64. Colt pistols wouldn’t fire metallic cartridges until Smith & Wesson’s patent expired in 1869, and they didn’t sell a conversion of the Navy revolver until 1871, and those were factory guns, not just cylinder swaps.
@@PristineTX so there were actual conversion navy revolvers that would fire cartridges, so is the issue that the movie was set before those were in circulation? i totally get the whole ball n cap issue, it wouldnt work like that
Especially now that Rich Evans is undergoing his own glow-up arc, similar to how Jay transformed from an Amish werewolf into Manlet Chris Evans over the course of like a single year.
Regarding 17:53 - I don't know how realistic it is, but neither did Tuco's actor. He knew next to nothing about guns but they wanted the scene to show him as being an expert, so Sergio Leone just told him 'fuck around with the gun parts and pretend you know what you're doing'. It's hilarious to think about, but he did a damn good job of making it look like he was on the ball with it and really DID know how to assemble a gun like that. Everything he did was just made up nonsense, but it worked.
that same scene was replicated in John Wick number 2 (or 3... I've only seen parts or 1, but know of this scene), and it actually is grounded in reality, he's in a museum and has to interchange the cylinder and did it as an homage to the classic scene.
He was basically taking the best parts from different revolvers to make Best Revolver ™️ say like a revolver has a good trigger but the cylinder might lock up sometimes or doesn't have very good sights, stuff like that.
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly has it all. When it tries to be funny, it’s hilarious. When it’s sad, it’s heartbreaking. When dramatic, it’s epic. The film is both gritty, but feels like myth. The story is wonderfully written. The direction, cinematography, and mise en scene are excellent. Morricone’s score is only (maybe) surpassed by a handful of other films… that he also scored.
I was so happy when Jay finished his story about never getting around to seeing the movie, and said that it was one of the greatest things he'd ever seen in his life. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly is my vote for the best movie ever made. From an art snob standpoint, looking at the cinematography, the direction, the score, etc it is absolutely phenomenal. From a dumb action movie standpoint, looking at the stunts and the clever one-liners, it is absolutely phenomenal. And when your movie is both Citizen Kane and Die Hard, your movie is the best movie ever made.
@JamesMacPherson I am not surprised, there is a ton of movies that considered a classic, and it's hard to watch even half of them, despite how big of a cinephile you are
I would love to see a re:View of Fistful of Dollars alongside Akira Kurosawa's Yojimbo. Fistful of Dollars is basically a remake of Kurosawa's film with some minor deviations. I think it would fascinating to see Rich and Jay's individual takes on the differences/similarities in addition to their thoughts on both films in general.
This is why I follow Red Letter Media. Rich is a great actor but when it comes to talk film, he's very knowledgeable and charming, not to mention humble. He brings about the best in Jay. The dynamic of these two is so different than, say, Mike and Jay, or Mike and Rich for that matter. That's probably why my favorite videos are Rich and Jay teaming up.
What impresses me about Rich recently is his genuine humility. He came across as a pure narcissist early-on (to me), he'd always blatantly steal Jack's ideas (after having already stolen Mike's long ago), but his reactions in quiet moments belie this first impression. He basks in attention towards himself, but he enjoys when others have their moments too.
Actually, my grandfather was managing a concession stand, during a showtime for this movie, back in 1967 when a middle-aged Rich Evans approached him for a tub of popcorn.
Eli Wallach wasn't in brown face. It was a natural suntan having spent several months in very hot Spain filming the movie. A lot of the Spanish and Italian actors, who were mainly from the south of Italy and Spain, also had natural olive-skin / brownish complexions. You can clearly see that both Confederate and Union soldiers in the movie were Mediterranean looking, which I found mildly amusing as Confederate soldiers were of British descent and most of the Union soldiers too. However, it didn't detract from this classic movie.
Imma let you finish, but they cast a Jewish guy instead of a Mexican. And Mexicans (or at least Spaniards) weren't hard to find. So there's a reason people complain. He was still amazing.
I think Jay brought up a good point that all the extras in this are weird looking and I think the variety of actor genetics muddled together by suntans, sweat, and grime really contributes to that and enhances the look of the movie overall. Looking at all the characters together with their wildly contrasting builds, facial structures, ect. gives the film this sort of fantasy quality you that normally you only see in animation or effects heavy live action.
Confederates were all over the place ethnically, and Union conscripts were even worse. Look at some of the pictures from the period. Most of these folks weren't pretty. They looked like the dregs of humanity.
One of the all time most satisfying movies ever. When they slowly move into position at the climax and it dawns on you they're going to have a three way stand-off...holy crap, so many chills.
There’s so many great nuisances and emotional scenes to this film with the music and cinematography… Specially the lesser scenes and plots, like the Tuco and brother tension, the confederate general dying of gangrene, the alcoholic Union general who dies, and the dying confederate soldier Eastwood finds and without any dialogue comfort’s him in his final breaths by letting him take some puffs off his cigarillo and covers him with his jacket. All nice detail to a story.
I loved the fact that Jay just watched this movie and was blown away by it. Truly great films never get old. EDIT: Man I'm so glad they talked a little about the "Ecstasy of Gold" Sequence. I have always thought that's the purest 15 minutes of cinema ever filmed.
That's such an intelligently edited sequence. Trying to capture the concept of being overwhelmed by all sides? I don't think I've ever seen it done as well in a film before this.
Fun fact about the civil war battle scene: The bridge explosion was incredibly expensive, and a crew member yelled at some actors to get in position. The pyrotechnics guy thought that was his queue, so he detonated the bridge when the cameras weren't filming. They had to build it and destroy it again from scratch.
my understanding is the Spanish military was involved and were apparently apologetic enough to rebuild and re-explode it...or they just wanted to play with the explosives
I came to the comments before finishing the review to see if someone commented that they didn’t bring it up. I was sad to see it wasn’t mentioned by the guys but happy to see someone mentioned it in the comments
The bridge scene was my favorite part of the movie, it had action, humor and drama all rolled into one. They didn't blow up the bridge just because, after drinking with that Union Army captain he tells Clint Eastwood's character that if he could, he would blow up the bridge in order to keep his troops alive, but can't because the brass want to capture it instead. A very humanizing scene for the captain, who didn't want to see anymore of his boys die, and the man with no name, who granted the captain his dying wish.
I never really read it as them blowing up the bridge to 'help'. Their goal was to stop the fighting because the armies were in the way. But I think, yes, you can argue it was intended still to suggest a humanising moral moment for Eastwood's character too. Layered characters, they can fit more than one motivation or goal in their head. Whodathunkit.
@Blisterdude123 absolutely! I agree that The Man With No Name saw the opportunity to advance his agenda, but I believe that he had at least a sliver of decency to blow up the bridge to prevent more unnecessary deaths.
A friend lent me this movie on vhs when I was like 14. I had heard of it, but did not know what to expect. Thankfully it was a letterbox version. And that made me realize for the first time how much you could miss watching movies on 4:3. That's the only time I have watched it and I can recall some scenes that were imprinted on my brain since then.
What’s funny is Rich saying he doesn’t feel movie literate and intellectual enough for these discussions; the man has some of the greatest insights on Re:View. As an Everyman Rich Evans see what Jay and Mike miss quite often. You keep at it dude!
Yeah that caught me off guard. He has always come off to me a very bright and almost to the point that he may be smug about it in real life. Again just speculation based on people I have known. And surprise he’s a good person who constantly doubts himself as an over correction lol. You’re smart Rich!
I'm surprised they didn't mention "the pan". The shot where Clint and Eli are riding across the landscape, totally alone, and then the camera slowly pans and they're in the middle of a huge civil war battle.
Even if he hasn't seen Fist Full of Dollars, there's still a chance he's seen Fist Full of Dollars. That movie's been made, shot for shot, a half-dozen times. It's the exact same film as Yojimbo, Buchanan Rides Alone, Last Man Standing, Lucky Number Sleven, etc.
It is not the exact same film as Lucky Number Slevin sure there's a playing both sides against each other angle but the variations are so great and there's so much different about it, it can't be considered a remake of fistful at all.
Rich, you're selling yourself short, buddy. I always find your participation in re:views to be insightful and endearing. Imposter syndrome is certainly a real thing, but you needn't lose sleep over this.
Well this video's already over 300k views, so I get the hesitation. It's interesting thinking about his re:view appearances with that in mind, because he does usually take a support role on these, and they're always movies he's watched many times before (and has probably researched a bit), so he can speak with some authority about some aspects. As someone with a similar "don't talk or they'll know you don't know things" problem, I don't mind him admitting this.
Honestly he kind of impresses me about how much he knows and even when held against Rich and Mike. He seems like someone who watches as many movies as I do. Just maybe not always the same ones.
I am not interested in a re view unless it has at least Mike and Rich together , Jay and Mike together or Jay and Rich together .... No offense to the guest reviewers
Rich has more knowledge than these guys in so many areas. I still remember him pulling out the fact about Soviets experimenting with gorilla human hybrids, and because I already knew that one it was great watching the others on the table reacting with such incredulity.
It was the dawn of replaceable parts, most of the designs were heavily based off one set of parts that could be replaced and repurposed on-demand. We didn't have pipelines for stupid shit like we do now.
Due to industrialisation during the Indian wars (pre civil war) the us army began weaponry with stanardizind weaponry parts so guns could be broken down and repaired in the field.
Gun manufacturers would also sell proprietary ammo to makeup the loss e.g in Red Dead Redemption 2 each gun used its own custom made cartridge you couldn't swap between brands. Gun catalogs from the Old West had a wide variety of ammo loads and sizes fragmented even further by gun company. There was no effort for standardization until after WW1 with so much surplus.
Eli Whitney came up with the concept and mass produced muskets for the army. Samuel Colt cheated to get the government contract for revolvers. He didn't have the machinery accurate enough to make interchangeable parts. He went through his guns until he found several guns with parts that could be swapped out. He then took those guns as an example of his workmanship and won the government contract. He used the money from that contract to then build a new factory that had the accurate machinery necessary for interchangeable parts.
I remember watching this movie at a friend's house when i was 12, we were watching it at 2am, on his shitty Panasonic, children-torso-sized tv with faulty exposed wiring, and it always stuck with me, not only because of the amazing cinematography, but also because i got electrocuted launched back against a wall when i touched the cable by accident.
Similar experience for me - sans electrocution - I first saw this on my little 14" bedroom black and white TV in 1988 on a local station Sunday afternoon movie slot when I was 13. It was a National Electronics TV, which is what Panasonic called themselves before they became Panasonic. My boys are 14 and 12 now, wondering if I show it to them, will they just be bored, or will it capture them like it did me?
Since Jay appreciates the epic feel of this one and its cinematic craft, he shouldn't cheat himself out of watching Leone's other opus and masterpiece, Once Upon A Time In The West, in the best quality possible.
I used to think The Good The Bad The Ugly was peerless until I watched Once Upon a Time in the West. It’d be difficult for me to decide which is better.
Italian Westerns, in general, are perhaps my favorite genre of film and this movie and "Once Upon a Time in the West" are both on my top 10 list. I've followed this channel for years, but I NEVER thought I would see anything even remotely spaghetti show up in a discussion here. So when I heard Jay say "this is one of the best f***ing things I've ever seen", my jaw dropped. I love hearing you guys talk about this! Thank you!
I've seen this movie quite a few times in my lifetime. It was great watching it in the 70's for the first time. Everything was great about it, directing, acting, cinematography, musical score. It just kicked ass all the way through. Pretty sure Eli Wallach wasn't in brown face, more he and the other actors were sunburnt/tanned from filming outside for weeks/months. Looking forward to watching this and all the spaghetti westerns again.
The classic westerns don’t get enough love these days. The Leone westerns and post-westerns like Unforgiven have been deservedly remembered and showered with praise, but the John Ford westerns like The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, The Searchers, and My Darling Clementine, and others from the same era like The Gunfighter all dealt with much more interesting and complex themes than your basic white hat vs. black hat westerns. TLDR: There’s a lot of great classic westerns, I hope more people give them a chance.
You are spot on. People who don’t watch westerns have very strong opinions and incorrect information on them. Most no B-movie westerns have morally complex and are far from cliche driven crap that people think it is. Even the westerns of the silent era we’re doing everything the spaghetti westerns did in the 1910s-20s. The good the bad and the ugly is close to a remake of 3 Bad Men
I hated westerns when I was first getting into movies (even though I hadn’t seen basically any), then I watched fistful of dollars, the searchers and Johnny Guitar and my whole opinion changed. I mean I’m 21 so clearly young people can enjoy them, it just takes the right one.
High Noon, Shane and Pursued are also excellent, although despite the setting I don't know if one could put Pursued in the western category at least it is not a "pure" example of the genre.
The Searchers is my favorite film of all time. Made Godard cry from his review, influenced Scorsese and Schrader in Taxi Driver. John Wayne’s character of Ethan really set up a lot of those dark characters!
Morricone's score still to this day feels so edgy and fresh. I love how the main theme keeps popping up throughout the film with different instrumental arrangements. Electric guitars, flutes, men hollering and shouting, and towards the final act when they're in the war it's played on just marching drum. It's so playful and creative.
Leitmotivs popping in and out at different times with odd instruments is one of my favourite things in movies and videogames. Another movie with an oft-repeated leitmotiv is the fantastic "THE LONG GOODBYE" by Robert Altman. Gould is so good in this movie, as well as every other actors.
@@DrummerDucky I think the best and clearest use of leitmotif by Morricone during that period was in Once Upon a Time in the West, where each major character has their own very different and distinctive them. Harmonica's and Frank's (both used in the same piece during the finale) are super-famous, but for me it's Jill's theme that stands above the others - it's lovely, grand and looks towards the later, more refined and lyrical, themes that Morricone would use in the 1980s.
It's actually feels more like an anti-war movie dressed up like a western than a western with the war as a backdrop. I love the movie. The bridge scene is one of my favorite moments
It's just an absolut classic .... The scene with Tuco in the small chapel where he meets his brother is one of the best scenes in character development i have ever seen in movies. For me this movie will forever have a special place in my heart ^^
I had the same reaction. Waited until I was like 34 when I finally saw TGTBATU and then realized I I had just watched one of the greatest films ever made. Actually stayed away from the entire genre for most of my life up until that point and then went on a Western binge over the course of the next several months.
Yes. This movie is technically more perfected, but I think the story in FAFDM is more emotionally captivating, and as such the finale is more satisfactory.
As far as the gun assembly scene goes, fitting different parts together by hand was an important process in early mass-produced firearms. This fitting would be done at the factory, but of course quality control wasn't the highest priority, especially during wartime. Tuco is taking Colt model 1851s that have parts that fit together well enough but not great, and he's taking the best parts from these and sticking them together into 1 well fitted gun.
Important to note that due to location and the fact that it's during the civil war, a lot of the parts he was going through probably weren't colt (due to them being on the Union side geographically) and were more likely a huge variation of handmade confederate parts patterned off the colt navy that would be way out of spec. if assembled together with other confederate and colt parts.
The Good The Bad and The Ugly is my 2nd favorite movie. I've been watching it since I was at least 4 years old. It's one of a handful of movies I can remember watching with my dad before he died. Also just for the sake of clarity, the quaint "white hat" western was really more a product of the 30's through the mid 40's. By the early 50's you started to see far more complexity added to the genre and it's characters. I highly recommend another Eastwood film called Hang'em High, also one of my personal favorites is Big Country featuring Gregory Peck.
Yeah good point that - the white hat/black hat movies were part of the 'great' saturation (or boom time) of Westerns, where every studio was knocking them out thick and fast and cheap. Simple, straightforward morality to lead up to the inevitable showdown; give em what they want to see. Of the post-war Westerns from the later studio system, when good directors were working with great actors (the first Western renaissance, as you say so rightly), my favourite is not The Searchers (which is everyone's), but it's The Man Who Shot Liberty Vallance; one of the first 'post-modern' westerns to my mind. Everything about it a meta reference to, or subversion of, the old tropes. Well, except maybe for Liberty himself, who's just an evil shit.
Watched this so many times in college and only just rewatched it like 2 years ago during lockdown. It was a breath of fresh air. Wallach gives one of the all timer performances and I'm so glad you mention the scene with Tuco and his brother, that's what makes the movie for me. You have one scene where you see what he's like with a family member and his veneer is briefly stripped away. But then Blondie connects with him after he has his fight "after a meal there ain't nothing like a good cigar."
I'm genuinely glad to see how Jay felt about this film, as like with Rich this has been a favourite movie of mine for years. But I had the same impression going in as Jay: THINKING I understood what the movie was, or would be, and being so amazingly surprised and blown-away by what it actually was. I really want to track down that new 4K release, the last time I viewed this film was on the old Special Edition DVD set!
At age 19, I got my first book deal -- to write Lee Van Cleef's biography (still in print from McFarland & Company). Now that I'm a filmmaker, I keep meeting old Van Cleef co-stars and hearing stories about Lee that I wish I could've included in the book. Ah well. Sometimes I get them on camera, though, to preserve for posterity...
I honestly didn't believe you when you said you wrote his biography, but having looked it up, I'm really impressed you managed to write an entire biography on Lee Fucking Van Cleef at 19. Props to you dude. Thinking of nabbing a copy.
@@Book_Of_Essence -- Grazie, fella. And I eventually went on to co-write the official DJANGO sequel for Franco Nero (only to be eventually replaced by John Sayles). I have amazing interview content from my archives that I'll put up on YT if you b*stards ever want to push me past 1K subs.
Document, document, document the Lee stories brother. Writing a bio at 19 is fairly damned cool too. Maybe we should send Jay a copy of your book to help him confirm or deny whether Mr. Van Cleef was indeed 'The Devil'.
He's such a great character. He's straight-laced at the beginning, but as we (and Manco) learn his backstory, his facade breaks down. Lee's face when he realizes that Eastwood has his pocket watch is heartbreaking
I'm shocked but also jealous that Jay could experience this masterpiece for the first time in his life just now. Boy is he in for a treat with the Dollar films and I would also recommend Once upon a time in the west.
i remember reading years ago that Leone elevated cinema violence to a new "standard" of sorts. in the 40s and 50s, whenever a gun was fired, it was done shot-reaction shot, i.e. the shooter would be in one frame and fire, then there'd be a cut to the victim in a different frame, who'd fall over. what Leone did differently was have the shooter in the extreme foreground with the victim in the background, and the sequence would all play out in a single frame. that little nugget of film history and filmmaking is what got me really excited about movies, and the western genre in general. the Dollars trilogy is way up there in my top favourite flicks of all time.
That’s not actually true. You can see the shooter and victim in the same frame in numerous films that predated Leone. John Huston’s version of The Maltese Falcon, for one.
My buddy and I just watched this for the first time for our movie club, the timing with your video worked out perfectly. Felt just like Jay, could not believe how incredible this is.
Before Edgar Wright directed the “Cornetto Trilogy” with the main cast returning in different roles he made “A Fistful of Fingers”, a western parody. And for the TV show “Spaced” he did a shootout without guns. Seems he is a fan too…
His score is a big reason why I love movies as much as I do. I listened to The Trio over and over after the movie ended and just got completely absorbed in how you don't even need visuals to see and feel exactly what's happening, it's the perfect climax. And that song comes *after* the song that many consider his greatest piece, just unbelievable how perfect the score is that supports this movie (and how unbelievably well the cinematography supports the score)
So happy to see them review this film and to see Jay's warm reaction to it. This and 'Once Upon a time in the West' are my favorite films, and top honors to 'A Few Dollars More'. Van Cleef's gun/rifle from that film adds 100 points of cool all by itself.
With so many shitty movies/tv shows being made over the last few years and watching so many (non-shill) online reviewers tearing them apart, it's so refreshing to hear "this is one of the best fucking things I've ever seen in my life."
So about three weeks ago, I finally watched The Godfather, and I felt like Jay watching The Good The Bad and The Ugly, like I would say to my friends and family eh I’ll get to it, thinking I knew what happened, but my gosh, after watching that I was blown away! One of the greatest things I’ve ever seen
@@anthonytrani1066 that happened to an old girlfriend, we were just sitting at home chilling I’m like wanna watch The Godfather? She was glued to the screen completely, it’s such a great movie.
@@MyMusicSosa the slow buildup of Michael taking over the family, thinking he would be some type of side character, but, turns out it’s his movie was wonderful. Still need to watch Part II, I will get it to it eventually
Greetings from Spain. I didn´t know much about this channel since I got homesick for a week. I hated Rich´s laugh at first but now I´m only looking forward to it. I think i´ve seen 9 years compressed in one month... twice. Thanks for helping me this deep dark moment of my life.
@@themoviedealers Yes, you are right. I usually make that kind of mistakes. But I won´t edit it. This would be my 'best of the worst homage' in a written way.
Fun Fact: The gun shop scene was mostly improvised. Eli Wallach knew next to nothing about guns or how they worked. Sergio Leone liked this and instructed him to simply play around and do what he wanted. Even though Eli Wallach wasn’t actually knowledgeable about what he was tinkering with, it does seem very convincing that Tuco has a keen understanding of firearms, which is a testament to how great of an actor Eli Wallach was and how superb Sergio Leone was as a director.
@@Tunkkis I thought he was trying to see which pieces were the best crafted cause back in the day factory perfect guns didn't exist. Like him looking down the barrel was meant to see how straight they were, how narrow the barrel is, etc. Or him checking the cylinder to make sure it turns well and has no problems in it. IDK that's my guess.
I was genuinly so happy when Jay said he loved the movie. After watching so many films (as I’m sure he has) there’s still gold out there to be found. And the passion displayed here is just great to watch.
Was that the one with the barrel scene (huge gigantic mega barrel he somehow supposedly set up a trap with whilst barely alive after being beaten by the baddies over and over?) And where he had the metal chestplate he somehow cut out of a boiler with no tools? 😅 I might be mistaking it for A Fistful of Dollars, but it was still excellent despite those niggles and was the inspiration for Marty McFly's chest plate in back to the future.
This was a lovely surprise. They don’t typically review the “classics” lots of obscure cult classics (which is absolutely fine one of the reasons I love RLM) however this now makes me want more of this. Let’s go back and look at some more! Like say the French Connection. Which is still one of my all time favorites. One the best cat and mouse movies ever!
So cool to see someone else watch this recently and loving it. I only saw The Good, The Bad and the Ugly a year or two ago. And it kind of blew me away that I still enjoyed it so much even though it's such an old movie. And I didn't get anyone else here to go watch it so, I didn't know anyone else who had that experience but here you are.
As an Italian, on the dub thing, you have to understand, while we make a lot of movies everything that comes from outside is dubbed, Asian, European, American, EVERYTHING. And we're really really good at it, there is a whole tradition, we have actors what work exclusively dubbing movies, being the official voices of some actors (because yes, big a list actors always have the same voice actor doing them). Sylvester Stallone had one of the best voice actors in Italy dubbing him and if you watch him in Italian he seems amazing all the time, even in bad movies. The problem is all this gets lost when you don't have all the tradition, care and love for dubbing movies that many non English speaking countries have.
I love movie dubbing. It reminds me of those old Godzilla flicks. From what I've seen, Italians indeed do it better because the aforementioned are comical where as every spaghetti western I've seen it's seamless enough that I only know it because I know of that practice itself. Edit: the reason in particular I enjoy it is because typically things are dubbed to fix an audio error, maybe somebody flobbed a line and it's easier to dub than reshoot _everything_ , either way it's better to dub than it is to just leave mistakes and say fuck it.
There is a much bigger reason. These "italian" movies were actually "european" movies, the money usually came from West Germany and France. They dubbed them because Italian, German , French, etc. actors spoke their language and upon release everything else was dubbed.
If I recall, in his youth, Lee Van Cleef was advised to get plastic surgery to downplay his features being so... that... but he declined to do so. Also, Metal Gear Solid fans who might find him sort of familiar, facially: he is the primary visual inspiration for Revolver Ocelot.
If I remember correctly, A Fist Full of Dollars was inspired by the Japanese film Yojimbo. The director of Yojimbo, Akira Kurosawa, was inspired by American westerns and made his film center around a lone ronin cleaning up a town of two rival gangs. If I remember correctly, there was a lawsuit over how similar the two films were and Kurosawa won. It’s so strange that much of the Spaghetti Western’s most successful and popular films were inspired by Japanese film.
its even more complicated, to cite wikipedia: The film was effectively an unofficial and unlicensed remake of Akira Kurosawa's 1961 film Yojimbo (written by Kurosawa and Ryūzō Kikushima); Kurosawa insisted that Leone had made "a fine movie, but it was my movie." This led to a lawsuit from Toho, Yojimbo's production company. Leone ignored the resulting lawsuit, but eventually settled out of court, reportedly for 15% of the worldwide receipts of A Fistful of Dollars and over $100,000.
Sergio Leone did most certainly later show that his success was not purely due to using strong source material when it came to "For A Few Dollars More" being great on it's own terms and worth it entirely to see Clint and Lee team up, and, well "The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly", which you could argue which is better between this and Few Dollars in content, but he did not have to go as hard as he did to make one of the most grandiose westerns ever, and all in the service of a simple story of 3 people looking for gold.
@@motherplayer Oh absolutely, I didn't mean to imply that Leone was somehow deficient in putting his own stamp on things. "Once Upon a Time in the West" is proof of that.
Granted Angel Eyes disappears for a good chunk of the first act, however, every time you see him, he gains a piece of information about Bill Carson. When he disappears, you don't see him again until after Tuco and Blondie learn about Bill Carson. The Bad seems inconsequential at first, but he is essential to the overall story narrative.
The bridge scene was filmed in Spain with an entire military unit but due to a bad signal, the captain blew the bridge too early ruining the take but he was so apologetic that they redid the entire thing including the bridge set.
I took Italian in college and my professor basically turned one of the courses into an Italian film course. We watched a ton of old Spaghetti Westerns and other Italian Movies like "Gomorrah", "Terraferma", and others that I have to look up. It was one of the best classes I ever took.
@@lawton6123 , I can't tell if this is a joke or genuine misunderstanding, but in case it's the latter: the term "spaghetti western" refers to movies in the western genre made in Europe from the 1960s to 1970s. Many were Italian movies trying to recreate the style and success of Hollywood westerns. So you have the real Hollywood western vs. the Italian "spaghetti" western.
Back again to pick one of my many favorite videos and fall asleep to it. Idk how it started or why these videos help my sleep so much but I’m definitely thankful. Maybe it’s the power of Rich Evens.
The line from Lee van Cleef "This train'll stop at Tucumcari." from For a Few Dollars More is one of my favorite lines ever. He's just so perfect in those movies.
This "trilogy" plus Once Upon a Time in the Wrst, in my opinion, make up a great work of art. In 100 years time people will still watch these movies and enjoy them.
@@CordellPotts A Fistful Of Dynamite is so underrated, the characters and message behind it, and plus it has the most depressing Leone movie ending (Once Upon a Time in America beats it but that's another story) .
I love the story that Eastwood returned back to the states. And he heard about this amazing western playing in theaters. He had to check it out. Quickly found out it was his own movie he made in Italy.
Loved this Re-View of one of my all time favorites. Hope you guys cover the other 2 movies in this trilogy, maybe together in the same video if not separately.
I'd love to see more reviews of older classics such as these. It'd be great to see you guys branch out from the 80s and really dive into 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s!
The first movie has the exact same plot as Kurosawa’s yojimbo, although yojimbo feels a little less morally grey (even though it absolutely is). You probably have, but definitely watch it if you haven’t yet.
What's interesting is Westerns were influenced by Samurai films like Seven Samurai or Yoijmbo, those same Westerns also ended up influencing Japanese film makers and animators. As far as film goes there is a lot in common between Cowboys and Ronins. Hell they have a whole subculture in Japan of Western fans that dress up like cowboys for conventions.
