The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly - Extended Cut (Two-Disc Collector's Edition)

WOW! I've always loved this flick & this Special Edition made me appreciate it all the more. Sergio Leone took all of our American, safe, comforting & familiar Western conventions, blew them all to hell & then thrust a jarring, jagged, grotesque epic in our faces. Even the landscape itself is alien-looking to us: sun-blasted & disturbingly weird, as though its from another world. The sets are all weathered, battered & awful-looking. Most of the people are striking in the strangeness of their appearance. Characters are unshaven, filthy, wear dirty clothes & look like they smell terrible. That's all just part of the foundation of this film, the characterizations are the biggest shock. Clint's Blondie is The Good (!!!???). What the hell? He could only possibly be considered as even remotely good in comparison to the other two & even then his "goodness" is strictly a matter of degree. Towards the end, he briefly comforts two dying soldiers & those are the only acts of human kindness in the whole movie. Also, he pets a small kitten instead of making a meal out of it or something. But its hard to imagine a story where a character like Tuco is comic relief. Also, Angel Eyes is truly an all-time great villain. Clint, Eli Wallach & Lee Van Cleef are uniformly fantastic in their parts. Imagine a Brooklyn Jew making the best cinematic bandito ever!

Now for the script - almost every scene is the height of absurdity & impossible events & unbelievable coincidences are strictly routine. There's an extremely fine-tuned, bizarre, subtle sense of humor at work here & the viewer gets a constant feeling of disbelief & unreality throughout the entire film. Leone perfectly balances the sublime with the ridiculous every step of the way & creates a unique moviegoing experience. The vast themes of war & all its tragedies are mixed in with some utter craziness as he goes along.

The extras are very enjoyable. First is the added footage. It felt like a new experience to me & I've seen this flick I don't know how many times. Kudos to Eastwood & Wallach for dubbing their parts so these extra scenes could be added. I was unaware that both Lee Van Cleef & Sergio Leone had died in 1989. It'd be interesting to have their participation & hear their observations. The interviews are quite good as well. Most telling to me was Clint's observation that Leone was so extravagant & meandering while he, Clint, was more economical & direct & that this was the major difference between the two of them.

I was careful not to include any spoilers for those lucky people who haven't seen GBU yet. To see it for the first time is a wonderful experience. I can't recommend it highly enough - even those who are sure that they'll despise it just may be pleasantly surprised. Like I said, all the machismo is offset by a truly wild, intelligent & unusual sense of humor. Buy this Special Edition - its well worth it!

Sergio Leone once said that he knew more about the old west than any American. I'm not sure he was right, but he might have been right about Hollywood westerns. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly is so good that it's title has become a part of the English language lexicon. The movie is, in it's own way, a comedy but there are moments of stark realism and pathos. The movie is not particularly logical or consistent but more than makes up for it with gritty characters and austere symbollism.

I hate it when people summarize films and books. Why should a reviewer want to give the story away to people who haven't seen it? I will hit some high points, however. The movie starts with a very dangerous scam. Eli Wallach--Tuco, The Ugly--is wanted for a long list of crimes. Eastwood turns him in and collects the reward money. Tuco is convicted to hang. Just as the door door is fixing to drop, Eastwood from some distance away, shoots the rope in two. Both Eastwood and Wallach ride off to rip-off another town.

The Civil War is raging in New Mexico and Blondy finds a wagon loaded with dead Confederate soldiers and houseflies. One man, dying, mentions Confederate gold buried...somewhere. Tuco and Blondy, dressed as Confederate troopers, are captured by Yankees. When in the prison camp they encounter Lee Van Cleef, the very, very Bad. While soldiers sing sweetly outside, Van Cleef and his henchmen beat our boys for information about the gold.

There is escape and treachery. Eastwood drags Wallach through the desert heat on the end of a rope. He releases him and Tuco, in a wonderful scene, barges in to a gun store, looking for the right weapon. Not satisfied with any, he starts taking them apart and putting parts together again. Satisfied with his new weapon, he terrorizes the shop keeper and steals the revolver.

In another scene Wallach encounters his Catholic Priest brother who curses him for being an outlaw. Wallach smacks him down and disgustedly tells him that after his brother went to the seminary, the family starved. Banditry was the way he fed the family.

In another scene, the comical Wallach is taking a bath in a Civil War battle under fire from Yankee field guns. A man who hates Wallach for some previous wrong, sneaks in to shoot him. Wallach shoots him, instead, because, as it turns out, Wallach always bathes with his revolver on his waist.

Another fabulous scene involves a battle. After the fighting is over and the soldiers have left, Eastwood finds a dying Southern soldier. Without a word being spoken, they exchange a cigarette back and forth until the soldier dies...one small act of humanity.

The last scene is truly amazing...even spectacular. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly face off in a three way duel in a cemetary. Nobody knows who to shoot at first. The camera pans up and you can see that the cemetary is an ampitheatre with the dead as the silent spectators. Dead people viewing an act of death. Wow.

Ron Braithwaite author of novels--"Skull Rack" and "Hummingbird God"--on the Spanish Conquest of Mexico

I first saw this movie in 1968 when I returned from Vietnam,
It was one of the best cowboy shoot em ups I had seen then and yuppers now 40 years later it still is among the best of the best.
Eastwood is hard core at his best!!.
I have wanted to buy this entire series for all of this time,finally I bought this one and the 2 others exactly like it in it's series.
They are by the way the best ones of those I reviewed, they are as great now to watch as they were then...
I seldom watch movies twice, this is a exception it's very well done.
I love my copy and the others in the series

Well, I really had high hopes for this one. Being a lover of western films, I decided I needed to go back and watch all the ones I had never seen, especially the old staples, i.e. The Wild Bunch, Magnificent Seven, etc. Having never watched one from this series, and being a moderate Eastwood fan, I was excited to get it home and watch it. All I can say was I was not impressed. I thought the musical score was annoying, screechy, repetitive, and not very interesting. It seemed Sergio Leone's greatest camera technique was extreme close-ups, or panoramic shots. While you can never criticize a beautiful panoramic shot of the West, I tire of people going on and on about the cinematography of this film. So we got a close-up of these guys eyes, wow. It's all a bit over dramatic. Many of the scenes were long and drawn out. I was so annoyed with unnecessarily drawn out scenes, that I fast forwarded towards the end when they were searching the tombstones. It was like Leone was trying way too hard, and everyone is buying it. Hate to criticize something so well liked, but when compared to other movies of this genre, it really doesn't stack up.

On the heels of a "Fistful of Dollars" and "A Few Dollars More", this film is the greatest of the Italian trilogy as Wallach and Van Cleef add perfect balance to Eastwood in this western thriller set in the Civil War, in the midst of Confederate General Sibley's failed attempt to wrest New Mexico from the Union. What is superior in this film, compared to the two earlier films with Van Cleef and Eastwood, is the addition of the excellent actor Wallach who plays the unprincipled, unflinching, killer Tucco who adds a constant, light and subtle comical touch to the film that invokes timely humor, literally tongue in cheek, into the many tense action scenes. Eastwood, as Blondie, is still the man with no name, speaking only a few words but speaking poignantly, as the dominant, cool good guy with Van Cleef as the methodical, steely eyed nemesis, a perfect foil for Eastwood. Wallach (Tucco) serves as a bridge between the two characters, making allegiances with who ever serves him the best. In other words, none can completely trust the other. This full version has several previously uncut scenes that add several minutes to the movie, some of which are helpful and a few may seem a little long such as the dessert scene where Tucco seeks revenge over Blondie. However, the film never loses its original punch and the sound track is unforgettable and it is used delightfully to kick up an action scene. Long after the movie is over, the music will continuously echo into your brain as the music never seems dated and the mere sound of the music heard anywhere brings you back to the film. Sergio Leone, who directed and wrote the script, pulls together one of the largest casts and production sets as he utilizes sets featuring whole towns and large scale battlefields. Some of the scenes of the Civil War are confusing such as the mix of what appears to be butternut uniformed Confederates mixed with the Union army at a bridge head. They may be "galvanized Yankees", confederates that traded sides after capture or they could be western volunteers. Leone pulls out the stops to create realistic battlefields, uniforms and gear although the bridge scene looks like a western version of the battle of Fredericksburg. In this large scene, he displays virtually every kind of cannon fro rifled Napoleons, smooth bores, large mortars and siege guns. The latter two less likely then the two former for the west due to limited transportation in the west particularly the siege guns. The additional 20 minutes history lesson on the additional disc gives a good over view of what was happening in this western Civil War campaign that the three characters stumble into. The film, with wide screen, is exciting, frequently funny, never too serious and unforgettable. A tremendous side story is the tremendous loss of life experienced during the Civil War displayed by large casualties, overwhelmed hospitals, prison camps, disabled veterans and, in the pivotal scene, a cemetery so large it seems without end. Although the characters are all hardened and can readily shoot a man, Leone shows, through the back drop of America's most costly war in human loss, the sheer violence and loss of life that reminds us that war is far less romantic than what is perceived initially and should be avoided if at all possible.
And the writing is first rate, there are numerous memorable lines spoken by the main characters such as:

"You see, in this world there's two kinds of people, my friend: Those with loaded guns and those who dig."

I saw the film when it originally came out while a military dependent on a Marine base, and it was the greatest audience to see a Eastwood western with several 100 active duty Marines in attendance who were enthralled and enthusiastic for every scene