A Fistful of Dollars

This is where it all began. For westerns, for Eastwood and also maybe for Leone. The day when a gunslinger arrived in a small town. The story is simple, but nice, the same as the characters in it. And Clint straining snappy lines through his perpetual cheroot is just delicious. When a man's got money in his pocket he begins to appreciate peace. (09/04/2009)

Out of sentiment for the material and respect for the legend of Sergio Leone, it's hardly three stars. In A Fistful of Dollars it is clear that the cult trilogy is still in its infancy. The budget is lacking and the technical side is all over the place, but the foundation stones have been successfully laid. Clint Eastwood with his growl, a unique Ennio Morricone and a surprisingly well-written story that at times feels like a spaghetti Bolognese commercial. (05/19/2024)

Leone’s first foray into western territory meant the arrival of a legend. This Kurosawa remake turned out particularly well and although Sergio was still fine-tuning his directing style to perfection, this is an amazing work. Of course, it can’t compete with Leone’s later masterpieces, which changed the face of cinema forever, but compared to the vast majority of other westerns (and other movies regardless of genre) its quality takes it to completely other spheres. ♫ OST score: 4/5 (06/03/2007)

A beautiful example of how a rigid genre can be pushed somewhere simply by being ignorant of its rules. Many of Leone's trademarks came about practically only by the fact that nobody on set (except Eastwood, who again didn't speak Italian, so he couldn't tell them much) realized that this is simply not how you make a western. A Fistful of Dollars isn't the first Spaghetti Western (there were 20-30 of them at the time), but it's the first one that didn't copy Western techniques. It messed with everyone's head at the time, and the early reviews were pretty fierce, for example, but I totally understand the unique experience it gave rise to in its day and why it was such a hit with audiences. The palpable heat, the sweat, the ugliness, the dust, the thirst, and the sleeping with one eye open. The familiar stuffiness of a forgotten frontier in a time when one could get lost over the horizon. An adventure that does not surrender its naturalistic aspects. Except for the blood, which was probably done by the catering girls. (07/08/2021)

I was shocked at how well a nearly sixty-year-old film worked for me. I don't have a problem with Westerns as such; my problem is that their plot tends to be too simple and, therefore, easily predictable. And spaghetti westerns are no exception in this regard. If I wanted to defend my original four-star rating to myself, I had to look for reasons elsewhere. And I found them. 1) Clint Eastwood was great in the role of a gunslinger (the best as far as I'm concerned), 2) Ennio Morricone was an undisputed musical genius, 3) I enjoyed most of the Italian portrayals of the Wild West more than the authentic American originals (except for a few exceptions). And even though the film has been around for a while now, I can't say that the action scenes were half bad. Sure, you can tell it's an old film, but despite certain reservations, I will rewatch it at some point, which cannot be said about many current movies. So, I really enjoyed the story of a man in the middle who didn't mind whose fire he cooked his beans over. Just the Gatling gun was kind of weird. / Lessons learned: It might come as a shock to the younger generation, but no one in the film uses a mobile phone. (06/18/2023)