The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly -- 1966 -- R

Currently listed as number 5 on IMDB's top 250 movies of all time, this is the first "Spaghetti Western" I recall seeing end to end and pay attention too. This class of movies is called this because it was produced by Italian studios. I also learned that this film is the third in the "Man With No Name" or "Dollars" trilogy which includes A Fistful of Dollars and A Few Dollar More (titles you cna be assured will be showing up here in short order).

This film follows three men (can you guess how they're referred to?) who lead dissimilar lives that converge over a single thing: money. A lot of money to be specific, but to tell too much would be to give away too much. Lots of little twists and reversals all over the place, some more minor than others, make it difficult to discuss this film without giving away very much of the plot.

To give some generals, these thre are no buddies by any means. We get introduced to them one at a time as they do what they do in their lives before they converge. The opening seven or so minutes of the film is completely without dialogue and very well done. Little moments that a weaker filmmaker would have put some line in such as "come on, honey" were left fully visual as the dialogue would have given us nothing. Dialogue is given at moments whre it is needed, and left out at all the right moments.

The main three characters are pretty well rounded out and believable, even if we're given precious little info about who they are. We get their personalities and how they would act and they are kept consistent throughout, making it a lot of fun to watch them all go at it.

The plot unravels fairly naturally and logically as they go from place to place. I would say there was only one part where I wished they'd just skipped it and moved on, and this was fairly near the end when they ran across some Civil War soldiers...again. They had quite a few Union and Confederate run-ins and by the time they hit their last one, I was ready for the 3 hour epic to be over. This sequence really didn't add much to the overall tapestry beyond a cool explosion and some very humorous moments.

The ending worked out perfectly with a three-way shoot-out (come on, that's not really a spoiler, is it?), and of course, it ended the mot logical way it could end.

Definitely a classic that deserves the props it's been given. It contains one of the most famous western movie themes ever; here, I'll whistle a few bars. (...) Hear that? Oh, yeah, computer. Sorry. It's very well constructed and a great film to watch. And if you like Taratino films, you'll find he's rather fond of this film too; he homages it a lot. So it's a must see if you haven't and you're a film guru.

Dead Heat On A Merry Go Round -- 1966

Strange and somewhat ambiguous title for a strange and somewhat ambiguous movie. We're not talking strange and ambiguous in a David Lynch sort of way, we're talking strange and ambiguous in the I-think-the-director-left-out-some-important-information kind of way. The theme of this review is

We start with James Coburn as either a mental patient or a prisoner (I'm not sure which) who gets out on parole, and it turns out is sleeping with the prison psychologist. Well, for some reason, he skips his once-a-month parole appointment to go out of town for some reason having to do with money (I think). Well, he leaves with $5,000 and is supposed to acquire another $85,000 before he returns. Again, no reason is stated why he has to do this. So he ends up in Boston and talks to a guy there about selling something. I don't know what he was selling, but it had a value of nearly $70,000 and he was only going to get a third of that. Along the way he marries some chick, and at least that reason was clear: he was too well known in Los Angeles, and he used her to get an apartment...or so it seems. This was probably the most interesting story thread, since we got the most explanation for it.

We finally get into the bank heist portion of the story, and while how we got there was incredibly ambiguous, the story of how they're going to do it mostly made sense. I did think their idea of timing it with the incoming Russian premier was clever in using the hubbub around him to mask their operation where on a normal day, the bank would get top priority. Also, the plan surrounding getting the money out of the airport area was exceeding clever, if not exceedingly risky. It made for some good final tension. When we got back to the final story of the wife (who we do feel a bit sorry for since, after all, she was conned), we get what is supposed to be the final insult (but I'm not sure to whom). We learn that someone died and left the estate to her; trouble is we don't know who this dead person is, nor do we know her relationship with that person. We assume it's the person we met earlier, but can't be certain since names are rarely exchanged here.

What fell apart in this one was character development. We knew very little about these characters or their lives outside of their purpose in the plot, which made pretty much everyone very one or two dimensional at the most. It appears that the script may have been cursed with the same thing that afflicted Tim Burton's Planet of the Apes: the "I forgot to put the characters' names in the dialogue" syndrome. We have quite a few characters and some of them are named occasionally, but on the whole we have very little idea who is who, and beyond that, no one talks about anything. We get lots of James Coburn going around and disguising himself badly, but very little in the way of meaningful discussion either about who everyone is or what is going on in the plot.

I'll also add that while most of the actors were pretty good, the first girl that Coburn seduces in a horrible French accent needed acting lessons in a big way. Imagine a 12 year old trying to sound like Marilyn Monroe and you'll get the idea. She delivered a monologue that would make David Lynch proud, since I sure couldn't make heads or tails out of much of what she spouted.

So in the end, this film might have been good due to its apparently ironic twist at the end. The problem was that everything was so hard to follow and lacked any explanation for what was going on that I spent more time trying to figure out what was going on (much less why) than I was able to spend enjoying the film. Personally, I can barely qualify it as a good effort; it just comes off as sloppy.

So why did I get this movie? Why, to see a young Harrison Ford as an uncredited bellboy in one scene, of course. It's like playing "Where's Waldo?". This was his very first big screen role at the ripe young age of 23 and his trademark smirk was still there eleven years before Star Wars.