A Fistful of Dollars reviewed

The Rojo brothers on one side, the Baxters on the other and Clint Eastwood right in the middle. Clint Eastwood has so much hype about him being the ultimate cowboy and so on but I had only seen one film with him in (Gran Turino) and he wasn't a cowboy in it, so I had no frame of reference. Then I saw a fistful of dollars and now I know, he is the greatest cowboy of all time. In the first five minutes I was hooked and that was before anything had really happened so the next ninety one minutes blew my mind.

The film starts of Eastwood riding in to a suffering town with two gangs fighting over leadership ( the Rojo and the Baxters) both gangs try to hire the Eastwood, he takes both jobs and sets about tricking them into fighting each other while he goes about taking their money. Of course by the end Eastwood proves himself to be a hero but at the start he seems very indifferent towards the suffering and frightened villagers but its all art of his "heroes journey." The film's colors weren't up to modern standards and the sound was slightly ahead of peoples mouths moving but in my opinion this simply adds to the effect of the movie. I have also recently watched the modern westerns 3:10 to Yuma and Appaloosa and while they were good films they were missing the grittiness of the old westerns, which add so much to these classic Eastwood films. Ennio Moricone (who wrote the score) did an outstanding job, his music emphasized the events as well as enhanced them.

This film was so absorbing that I found it almost impossible to look away, pause it or think of anything else for several hours afterwards. A fistful of dollars had it all comedy, action, drama, suspense it was even sad at times but it managed to pull off everything with class (unlike some more modern films that just throw them in where ever.) This was by far the greatest western film I have ever seen and is high on the list of my favorite films of all time. So if you haven't seen this film watch it, I can guarantee you will not be disappointed. It is the ultimate western but now I'm going to go watch For a few dollars more so I may change my mind.