In "For A Few Dollars More, director Sergio Leone brings Clint Eastwood back as The Man With No Name to kick some serious ass in the second installment of the Dollars series. True to his directing style, Leone stars Clint Eastwood as the definite protagonist, even with his rather obvious character flaws (being a "bounty killer" isn't exactly honorable). As with "A Fistful of Dollars", Leone has the film set in the dry, rocky terrain of the American West (though both films were made in Europe), with the protagonists (Eastwood as The Man With No Name and Lee Van Cleef as Col. Douglas Mortimer) fighting against somewhat insurmountable odds to serve out justice where it is due....and collect several thousand dollars of reward money in the process.
What sets this film apart from the rest of the series is how Leone incorporates the past of the characters with the story line. The best example of this is when we are constantly shown flashbacks of Indo raping a woman, who turns out to be Col. Mortimer's sister. This rape, it turns out, is why the Colonel is so set on collecting Indo's head, bounty or no. It also expains the pocketwatch that Indo always has with him, and uses as a timer when dueling certain adversaries.
Also, this is the one of the first Leone movies to have multiple settings all across the landscape (as can also be seen in "the Good, The Bad, and The Ugly"), whereas in "A Fistful of Dollars", the whole stroy took place in a single town.
1 comment:
One thing that i have found to be a constant in all three films is clint eastwoods character's complicated moral compass. In all three movies he seems to be on niether the "good" side or the "bad" side. He simply starts off doing only what he wants in order to benefit himself, but then always ends up doing what he thinks is right. He is basically a lone wolf that only works for himself and his needs and what he wants, but then when a situation presents itself where he has to do what he thinks is right, essentially making him the good guy in each movie, kind of a reluctant hero sort of character.
Post a Comment