A different sort of Sergio Leone Western, this one takes place during the Mexican Revolution, with more politics than usual. But there's still plenty of action, with Rod Steiger as a cigar-chomping peasant who robs banks to liberate political prisoners, and James Coburn as an Irish terrorist trying to flee from his bitter past. They team up to thwart a sadistic officer and help the cause; redemption for the more subdued Coburn provides added depth.
Ten years in planning, Sergio Leone's epic Once Upon A Time In America portrays 50 years of riveting underworld history and offers rich roles to a remarkable cast. Robert De Niro and James Woods play lifelong Lower East Side pals whose wary partnership unravels in death and mystery. Strong support comes from Tuesday Weld, Joe Pesci, Jennifer Connelly, Elizabeth McGovern and the young actors playing the central characters as ghetto kids.
The so-called spaghetti Western achieved its apotheosis in Sergio Leone's magnificently mythic (and utterly outlandish) Once upon a Time in the West. After a series of international hits starring Clint Eastwood (from A Fistful of Dollars to The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly), Leone outdid himself with this spectacular, larger-than-life, horse-operatic epic about how the West was won.
By far the most ambitious, unflinchingly graphic and stylistically influential western ever mounted, The Good, The Bad And The Ugly is an engrossing actioner shot through with a volatile mix of myth and realism. Clint Eastwood returns as the "Man With No Name," this time teaming with two gunslingers (Eli Wallach and Lee Van Cleef) to pursue a cache of $200,000, and letting no one, not even warring factions in a civil war, stand in their way.
The leading icon of a generation, --Roger Ebert, Academy Award winner Clint Eastwood continues his trademark role as the legendary "Man With No Name" in this second installment of the famous Sergio Leone trilogy. Scripted by Luciano Vincenzoni and featuring Ennio Morricone's haunting musical score, For A Few Dollars More is a modern classic - one of the greatest westerns ever made. Eastwood is a keen-eyed, quick-witted bounty hunter on the bloody trail of Indio, the territory's most treacherous bandit.
A Fistful of Dollars launched the spaghetti Western and catapulted Clint Eastwood to stardom. Based on Akira Kurosawa's 1961 samurai picture Yojimbo, it scored a resounding success (in Italy in 1964 and the U.S. in 1967), as did its sequels, For a Few Dollars More and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. The advertising campaign promoted Eastwood's character--laconic, amoral, dangerous--as the Man with No Name (though in the film he's clearly referred to as Joe), and audiences loved the movie's refreshing new take on the Western genre.
