One Paragraph Movie Review: The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly

One hundred and ninety-fifth film: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly. Watching a thousand and one movies before I die would be a lot easier if they didn’t keep making the bloody things three hours long, and as any review of this one will tell you, it’s thin enough on actual plot that you could easily shave off two thirds and still have a decent yarn. But the story — three ruthless blokes forming fluid, rapidly-evaporating alliances during a search for stolen Confederate gold during the American civil war — isn’t the point. The point is how this vast, sweaty, dusty, fly-blown thing looks, and the feel of the tense, macho peaks dotted amongst the endless tension-building dry spells. Fair to say though that the point is NOT (with the exception of the literally exceptional Morricone score) how it sounds. A spaghetti western, it was filmed silently, so every actor acted in their native language with the dialogue dubbed in afterwards, along with every gunshot, explosion, gravelly boot-heel and soggy cigar squelch. So beautiful. So long. So many close-ups (not a terrible thing when some of them are young Clint Eastwood). So many Western movie stereotypes. And so, SO badly dubbed. Three completely blank rocks out of five.