Request: A Fistful of Dollars

[just_wes]

Poll Rate it: A Fistful of Dollars

-- derralf

Comments

8.

[thescientistmrj]

Whilst not the best film in the series - that belongs to the brilliant and severely underrated For A Few Dollars More - it's still a fantastic film. Borrowing from Eisenstein's October in one sequence and lifting it's story from Yojimbo, A Fistful Of Dollars is hardly original, but damn does it play like it is. Eastwood is superb, and the opening sequences of the film are quite daunting. Overall it's an impressive film with a great cast, overlooked by the superior For A Few Dollars More and The Good, The Bad And The Ugly, this is a film that should be seen first to be appreciated before viewing the superior films of the series.

[bumbletbw]

This is my second favorite of the trilogy behind Good the Bad and the Ugly. I do understand that this movie draws heavily from Yojimbo, but Yojimbo itself is an adaptation of a Dashiel Hammet novella, "Poisonville" or better known as "Red Harvest". The Hammet story involves the protagonist setting four different gangs against each other, and Kurosawa simplified the story by cutting out two of the gangs, and no script that has ever used the story as source material aside from Miller's Crossing has always used the Yojimbo archetype.

I've always said that while Eastwood is a Western icon, he's a lousy cowboy, but a Grade A badass. And that's how this story goes. Eastwood is the badass antihero. He is materialistic and self-serving, but also has a sense of right and wrong and ultimately punishes the fokls that prey on the weak and helpless by turning the power hungry bastards against each other. This film had a great hand in making Eastwood an icon for a reason.