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Once in a great while a western comes along that breaks new ground and becomes a classic of the genre.
This is a hard-hitting item, ably directed, splendidly lensed, neatly acted, which has all the ingredients wanted by action fans and then some.
From Clint Eastwood's iconic performance to Ennio Morricone's unforgettable (and much-parodied) musical score, A Fistful of Dollars (****) took the western down trails it had never explored.
Egregiously synthetic but engrossingly morbid, violent film.
Really little more than a series of loosely connected shoot-outs -- but, as Sergio Leone proved, there can be a lot of fun in that.
Westerns were never the same after Sergio Leone.
The moment where Sergio Leone, anonymous costume drama hack turned into Sergio Leone, keen stylist and poet of cruelty.
Guns galore in intro "spaghetti Western" serving.
What Leone does with this movie is boil the Western down to its very essence, removing all the extraneous parts.
A deliciously ripe spaghetti western
Very much an act of sardonic disrespect toward the genre, yet it's also a legitimate passion play
A Fistful of Dollars may lack the mournful intensity and Shakespearian comedy of the later Leone classics, but as an action film it holds up brilliantly.
A clever film, shot with sophistication, which ... propelled Eastwood to international stardom.
Though far from perfected in this film, Leone's style would mature through his next two films.
It's Leone's shortest and simplest film, but all of his hallmarks -- a masterly use of space within the widescreen frame, Ennio Morricone's unusual soundtrack music, plenty of silence -- are already in place.
Leone's pulpy, trend-setting parody -- a rip-off of Kurosawa's Yojimbo -- hog-tied the Western and dragged it into the modern age, branding it with baroquely big close-ups and Ennio Morricone's famously eclectic score.
Though far less operatic and satisfying than Leone's later work, his first spaghetti Western with Eastwood still looks stylish, if a little rough at the edges.
A wonderful cinematic experience.
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