3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): A Fistful of Dollars

1964, Sergio Leone (Duck, You Sucker!) -- Amazon

Weird, but The Man With No Name is named Joe. In fact, he is named in all three movies.

During the backend of The Pause when I was working from home more often, I did some lunch-time movie watching. I professed a desire to be exposed to the Spaghetti Western genre, but was frustrated by Amazon's lack of titles -- it was a scattered collection at best. And it did not include the seminal Clint Eastwood movies. The series did not start the Spaghetti Western concept, but it brought it to commercial success and audience attention. And then, lo and behold, here they were.

So, if Rashomon spawned a bunch of movies where a story is told from multiple viewpoints, then Yojimbo tells the story of a beleaguered village where a Lone Wanderer comes in and pits two gangs against each other. Leone's unofficial adapting of the Kurosawa movie spawned a lawsuit, which did point out that even Kurosawa didn't originate the trope, even going back to a Dashiell Hammett novel Red Harvest. But that didn't stop the suit and Leone's payout to Kurosawa. And I am sure most would agree (even me) that people now attribute this plot concept to Westerns more than anything.

So yeah, a small town just over the Rio Grande in Mexico where two gangs stare each other down from opposite ends of town. Its not much of a town, basically their two haciendas and a ramshackle cantina in between, as well as some beleaguered villagers constantly hassled by the gangs.

And then rides in The Man With No Name, seeking work. Or The Stranger. Or ... Joe (Clint Eastwood, Lafayette Escadrille). He gets a quick rundown from Silvanito (José Calvo, The Twelve-Handed Men of Mars) the cantina owner, and immediately enters the fray by gunning down four Baxters, the American gun-running gang. That allows him to make friends with Don Miguel Rojo (Antonio Prieto, Los dos golfillos), of the alcohol & illicit substances smuggling gang. 

Later, Joe witnesses the Rojos betray a company of Mexican soldiers who thought they were buying guns from a group or renegade American soldiers. Esteban Rojo (Sieghardt Rupp, Don't Look Now... We're Being Shot At!) hopes to frame the Baxters for the massacre, but Joe messes the plan up by snatching two bodies and selling the news that two Mexican soldiers survived the massacre and are holed up in a cemetery -- to both sides. That leads to a gunfight where many die and one Baxter is captured.

Meanwhile Joe is poking around the Rojo hacienda looking for the gold, that was being used by the Mexican soldiers to buy the guns, when his fist bumps into Marisol (Marianne Koch, Death Drums Along the River), a beautiful local that the Rojos have absconded with. She stays with the Rojos knowing they will kill her husband and son should she try and escape. That kind of pisses Joe off, and since he owes her for the boop in the nose, he arranges for her escape the town, but the Rojos figure out he is responsible and beat him within an inch of his life. He does escape and is smuggled out of town by the undertaker (casket maker? you know, the classic guy who looks at you odd in order to measure your height for the impending casket!) to recover in a mine.

Meanwhile, the Rojos use this attack on them, and loss of Marisol, as an excuse to massacre the Baxters, right down to the true leader of the gang, Consuelo Baxter (Margarita Lozano, 15 Scaffolds for a Murderer). But they still want Joe, and end up torturing Silvanito to find out where he is. Joe has been hiding long enough and comes to town, to finally deal with the remaining Rojos. 

Despite my somewhat snarky recap, I kept on marveling how well paced and executed this movie was. This was the era of the American Western, with dozens of cheesy movies and TV shows out. I expected this incredibly badly ADR-ed movie to suffer from a terrible script, and terrible acting and was pleasantly surprised at how reigned in  the cheese was. Eastwood embodies the cool, composed expert who seemingly is in it only for himself, but sacrifices almost everything because a child is crying for his mother. Leone was known for establishing a lot of style in this movie that ended up defining action adventure movies for decades to come, such as the focus on characters' faces.

I hope the remaining two live up to expectations. I have seen The Good, the Bad & the Ugly before, but I barely remember it, and it was probably on Saturday afternoon TV.