The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (Il Buono, il Brutto, il Cattivo.) Reviews
TIME Magazine
Top CriticAll three arrive at the cache at the same time. Who gets it? Director Leone doesn't seem to care very much, and after 161 minutes of mayhem, audiences aren't likely to either.
The third in the Clint Eastwood series of Italo westerns, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly is exactly that -- a curious amalgam of the visually striking, the dramatically feeble and the offensively sadistic.
Though ordained from the beginning, the three-way showdown that climaxes the film is tense and thoroughly astonishing.
Sergio Leone's grandiose 1966 western epic is nothing less than a masterclass in movie storytelling, a dynamic testament to the sheer, invigorating uniqueness of cinema.
Full Review
| Original Score: 5/6
Sergio Leone's epic looks good, almost great, restored to its original running time.
Of all the great films of the 1960s, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly is one of a fistful that can be truly appreciated only on the big screen.
| Original Score: 3/4
Leone's blockbuster is balanced on the razor's edge between popular entertainment and art film. It took classic American themes and turned them inside out.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/4
This is a great movie, whatever strange estuary of the western river it occupies.
An improbable masterpiece -- a bizarre mixture of grandly operatic visuals, grim brutality and sordid violence that keeps wrenching you from one extreme to the other.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/4
Art it is, summoned out of the imagination of Leone and painted on the wide screen so vividly that we forget what marginal productions these films were.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/4
The uncut new print reclaims the widescreen majesty of Tonino Delli Colli's cinematography, allowing you to see every iconic wart and furrow on every bad guy's face.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/4
It's great to see a great director's film as he intended it, with rich color and restored sound.
All told, and in giant widescreen, it's only blood-red adolescent fun, but it blooms like Douglas Sirk with a Gatling gun compared to the teenage demographic's current fare.
