SunnyHello Nice effects though.

ThedevilChoose When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

InformationRap This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

Taha Avalos The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

Antonius Block Clint Eastwood was not director Sergio Leone's first choice for the 'Man with No Name' role, but he's excellent, and a huge part of why this film is successful. He has the look of a rattlesnake in Leone's tight shots, exudes confidence and is tough, and yet he's also wryly playful. His best lines occur early on, when he calls out four men for trying to intimidate him by shooting at his mule when he rode into town. He says, "I don't think it's nice, you laughin'. You see, my mule don't like people laughing. He gets the crazy idea you're laughin' at him. Now if you apologize, like I know you're going to, I might convince him that you really didn't mean it." It's easy to see why this film and the rest of the Spaghetti Western films which shortly followed established Eastwood as a star. His poncho and thin black cigars are also iconic.Leone's direction is also strong. He creates a gritty, dark mood in this film, combines those tight shots on his actors with wide panoramas, and makes great use Ennio Morricone's music. The film was shot in Spain and has some gorgeous shots early on, but I would have loved to have seen more of them. The dialogue was clearly dubbed in afterwards, and except for Eastwood, is sometimes hard to understand. José Calvo is good as the innkeeper who befriends Eastwood, but John Wells (Gian Maria Volontè) as the main villain is just average. I was not happy that Leone had pirated Kurosawa's film Yojimbo (1961) to make this one, but tried to keep it out of my mind. It's an entertaining movie, the birth of a great collaboration between Eastwood and Leone, and seems to have been influential to the entire genre, and for all that it's worth watching.

merelyaninnuendo Fistful Of DollarsThe camera work is not only supported but celebrated with an amazing cinematography as it does usually on such western feature. As much as simple the plot goes, the weaving of the whole structure goes dull in its first act, as it grows obvious. It is rich on technical aspects like sound effects, background score and editing. Sergio Leone is no short on execution and has probably improved on his skills as it keeps the audience engaged and doesn't unnecessarily chews off the character's perspective. Clint Eastwood holds on to its role and delivers the expectations and doesn't require any support at all. There are few action packed sequences and whistle-blowing dialogues that can only come out of a fanboy's perspective and this is the key that makes the feature stand alone in its franchise. The choreography too has improved a lot and so has the meddling of the emotions among the characters that is done well within shorter runtime of almost 100 minutes that helps factor in on its favor. Firstful Of Dollars is more than a handful and even though its reach for something more colossal that its potential fails in here, it still grasps a whole lot of popcorn fun in here.

Matt Greene Leone's first western certainly isn't his most ambitious. However, the familiar, simple take it has on the anonymous-man-coming-to-town-and-helping-the-good-guys story is so wonderfully told with the director's unique touches of style and unflinching propensity for violence. The action is fun, intense and exciting, and the bad guys are presented so that hating them is an absolute joy.

Movie_Muse_Reviews The Western genre changed forever with the release of Sergio Leone's landmark Spaghetti Western "A Fistful of Dollars," but not necessarily for reasons you might think when it comes to a movie deemed a "classic."The story is weak, most of the acting bordering on comical and there's no depth to speak of, but the Akira Kurosawa-inspired style of "A Fistful of Dollars" makes it entertaining and a rather fascinating watch from a stylistic perspective. Leone did things with a camera that Hollywood hadn't seen before (probably … I admit I wasn't there), an approach that made the Western more entertaining yet more dramatic and tense.Clint Eastwood stars as Joe, or more popularly, "The Man with No Name," in the role that launched the "Rawhide" star's film career. When he comes upon the Mexican border town of San Miguel – where you either get rich or get killed – the anonymous gunslinger puts himself at the center of a bloody feud between the Baxters and the Rojos, playing them off of each other for his financial gain. The Man with No Name is essentially the Western's first true anti- hero. That's the primary contribution "Fistful of Dollars" makes to the genre – it pushes past the black-and-white cowboy heroes and wanted bandits dynamic. "Joe" has one character-revealing moment when he takes pity on a woman named Marisol (Marianne Koch) and her family, who are captives, in a sense, of the Rojo brothers. Otherwise, he's a troublemaker with money on his mind; we just like the guy because he's a badass who is less slimy than the rest of the characters.The script annoyingly drifts between too overt and not explicit enough, but eventually it becomes clear that the only dialogue worth paying attention to is the clever quips, and that it doesn't matter how a point of tension or violence is reached, but how it looks and feels when we get there.Leone isn't at the peak of his powers here by any stretch, which should be obvious given this was his first foray into Western territory and second film ever, but he gets enough right to open the door to a shift in thinking about how these movies are made. "Fistful" is an experimental playground for camera angles and various perspective shots. Cinematographers Massimo Dallamano and Federico Larraya play a lot with lighting, incidentally creating Eastwood's trademark squint. You might argue that Leone and crew stumbled upon greatness and that this movie is a combination of stumbles and sure-footed landings.The secret weapon is Ennio Morricone. The composer's score feels familiar to modern audiences, but it's his creativity using raw sounds and singular instruments in striking patterns that ultimately redefined the genre. He brings the tension, mystery and swagger to the film. He even recognizes when silence works better than anything he could write. In so many ways, his music really glues this experiment of a movie together.Movies that rise to the top in spite of their weaknesses by means of style and creativity are extremely rare, and they're usually an indicator of a film that's a game-changer to the art form. "A Fistful of Dollars" qualifies. It's a film that is much more important than it is great.~Steven CThanks for reading! Visit Movie Muse Reviews for more