Short Movie Review: For a Few Dollars More
The second part of Sergio Leone’s “Dollars” trilogy is, I’d say, better—or at least more fully realized—than the first. Clint Eastwood’s Man with No Name (here often called “Manco”—one-armed—because he does most everything with one hand, leaving the other free to shoot with) teams up with bounty killer Douglas Mortimer (Lee van Cleef) to track down ruthless bandit El Indio (Gian Maria Volontè, who also played the chief villain in the first installment). The characters are better drawn: Indio, in particular, is a more compelling villain, and we see Manco meet his match in crack-shot Mortimer. While the two ostensibly have a partnership to catch Indio, they’re clearly rivals, and we see Manco’s flaws as he keeps trying to one up Mortimer and failing. The plot’s also tighter than *Fistful*, and the characters have more interesting motivations. There’s a great shootout in the street when Manco tries to get Mortimer to leave El Paso and the final fight in the little town where Indio and his bandits have holed up is a classic gunfight presaging the likes of the concluding scene of later Westerns like *Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid* (albeit, with a happier result). Van Cleef would return to play the villain in the final installment, *The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.*
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Hell yeah. Love these flicks; they’re absolute treasures. Are you going to do Once Upon a Time in the West too?
By D on 12.09.08 1:48 pm
I went onto Netflix to add it to my queue, and it was on the front page in the “Recommended for you” section.
By Dan on 12.09.08 2:03 pm
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