3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): For a Few Dollars More

1965, Sergio Leone (Once Upon a Time in the West) - Amazon

The Man With No Name is now called Manco (Clint Eastwood, Dirty Harry) and he's a bounty hunter, not some itinerate wanderer. Grab a poster off the sheriff's office wall, track down the criminal, shoot him and drag the body back to claim the reward. That is the way of the Old West.

This one was alright. If the last one surprised me by having more plot than I expected, this one had ... less? If it did anything, it allowed the villain to be more than a dummy who is foiled by our daring & clever Good Guys.

So, El Indio (Gian Maria Volontè, Hercules and the Captive Women) has broken himself from jail and reconnected with his notorious gang. He has exited the jail with a plan to rob the bank in El Paso, Texas, This bank's vault is said to be unbreakable, with lots of armed guards and many layers of barred rooms within the bank itself. Also, the real vault, as in the place that has all the gold, is not a vault at all, but a single safe hidden behind a pretty wooden cabinet. Indio got this knowledge from his cellmate.

After some initial rivalry, Manco and fellow bounty hunter Col Douglas Mortimer (Lee Van Cleef, Escape from New York) decide to team up to get Indio and his gang. Rough looking Manco will insinuate himself into Indio's gang while pristine & precise Mortimer sets himself up in the hotel across from the bank. The plan goes decently enough but Indio is smarter than both of them -- he doesn't go in the front door as they expected, but just blows up the wall at the back of the bank, roping and dragging off the safe/cabinet.

The gangsters  run away with their loot, and Mortimer gives chase, anticipating their destination. He shows Indio how to get into the safe without blowing it up. Indio promises the cash will be divvied up after the dust, the ever present dust, settles in a month. Manco and Mortimer both have the idea they can steal the money under Indio's nose but are caught, but not before they actually do steal it, and hide it... by tossing it into a tree. Good thing it wasn't actually gold, but... promissory notes? Anywayz, Indio reveals he knew that both of them were bounty hunters.

Indio is a sly little fucker who has even further plans, including the betrayal of his own gang, framing one for freeing the bounty hunters and setting others against each other. And he knows the bunch he sends after the bounty hunters will just die at their hands. It all ends with the inevitable stand-off, but primarily between Mortimer and Indio, where its revealed that "you killed my sister, prepare to die!"

If anything, this movie suffered from trying to be more. The greater budget is very apparent in the number of extras, the full taverns, the number of characters with speaking parts. And the construction of the El Paso town, a full town that is apparently now a tourist attraction in the wilds of Spain. But in trying to be more, it seemed to have lost some of its focus, on the characters, on the styles that made the first so compelling. 

I realize I am not taking to these "spaghetti westerns" as much as I thought I would, and its primarily the loss of the majestic landscapes of the "proper" America westerns. In my mind, a good Western is about the journeys as much as the action and gun play. The overseas films are distilling some pretty specific stylistic choices which do make for great characters but maybe are not my interest. But still, my long meandering way, I am still interested in exploring the sub-genre.