Last Night

"Fistful of Dollars"...let me count the ways.

It's not a very good movie. Iconic, yes, important, yes, but good...sorry, no. And the very thing the experts use to justify it's legendary status, is the very thing that keeps it so far from the top tier of Westerns. In short, it's got no soul, man, no heart, no meaning. The triumph of style over substance, the end of Old Hollywood, which was the end of Hollywood, which was the end of entertainment for it's own sake (but entertainment with meaning). The experts will tell you how it wiped away the tired old John Wayne western, as if John Wayne were making crap like "Rio Lobo" and "Cahill" at that point, when he had still had a "Liberty Valance" in him, not too long before, one of his best and most sensitive roles. They'll try to tell you that the western was the western of Roy Rogers at that point, in the early 60's, as if there had been no Anthony Mann, no "Ride the High Country".

There's nothing wrong with enjoying those "Spaghetti Westerns", but there's no resonance to them, no moral struggle at the heart of them, and you can claim Vietnam and Dallas as the reasons they exist, but I'll show you Iraq, and Grand Theft Auto, and Hip Hop, and Paris Hilton as their result; the idea that nothing matters but style and money, and that the idea of a moral code, based not on god but on what is best for all of us, is old fashioned, antiquated, and best left in that rosy past. The classic Western at least presented the notion that each man, each gray and morally compromised man, had a choice ultimately to do what was right, be it the code of society or his own moral code --- the Spaghetti Western said that none of this matters, just be sure to look good while you do your killing. Even Clint ultimately repudiated this with "Unforgiven".

And besides that, "Fistful of Dollars" just isn't very entertaining.