For a few dollars more (1965)

Director: Sergio Leone
Stars: Clint Eastwood, Lee Van Cleef, Gian Maria Volonte


Review:
For a few dollars more (1965) is the second installment of the dollars trilogy, followed by many considered to the the greatest (spaghetti) western of all time, The Good, the bad and The Ugly (1966). Leone's directorial debut, the first of the dollars trilogy, A fistful of Dollars (1964) is actually a rip-off from the Akira Kurosawa film Yoyimbo (1961), and was successfully sued. For a few dollars more is the first time Leone is all on his own, and you can see that it is carefully designed and structured in story and characterization.

The film starts by setting up the characters. Lee van Cleef saw a wanted poster in a train station and the ticket seller told him "nobody dared to go after that killer". Actually that guy is just schmuck and Lee got him and claimed the reward. Eastwood is set up the same way, and we see and understand Lee and Eastwood are both good gunfighters.

Next the villian Indio was established. He was imprisoned and ruthless killing everybody in his prison break, with one exception so that he can tell the other his tale. Probably the tutor of Mickey Knox from Natural Born Killers (1994). Indio also got the man who put him in prison in the first place, and killed his whole family, including a infant child. We now have the image that Indio is a crazy, brutal, and reckless bad guy.

The characters do things in the most "western" way in any other western I have ever seen, and it is so much fun to watch. They just awkwardly doing things, and after they have done we understand what they was trying to accomplish. Lee light a match using the face of one of the member of Indio's gang to piss him off. But the gang member holds back and leave. The bartender asked "Why did you chose my place to commit suicide? I know that guy and it is a miracle he didnt shot you." "Yes there must be some reason." So Lee wanted to confirm that those are the gang members, and they wanted to do something big.

Shadowed by The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, relatively few people talked about For a few dollars more, but that doesnt mean it was a ton of fun to watch.