The Dollars Trilogy
So your favorite Leone film stars a Man with No Name, huh? At once it can be said that you are a person who enjoys films with great action and characters with the presence of a grizzly bear. The tremendous amounts of violence mixed with vicious evil don't frighten you in the least. On the contrary you are fascinated, perhaps even mesmerized by the stories of revenge and treachery taking place. Doesn't mean you are depraved, just maybe a little desensitized by too many violent video games. You are also most certainly not a film snob. Made within three years of each other, Fistful of Dollars (1964), For a Few Dollars More (1965), and The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly (1966), all bear an interesting story flaw that most critiques would usually pan. In these films the characters never change who they are, they are the same at the beginning as they are at the end of the film, a real no-no in today's movies where characters should have an emotional arc. The thing about the spaghetti Western scene in 1960s Italy was that this was the furthest thing from their mindset. The idea was to give a director five thousand dollars to make a movie and not to expect to see him back until the movie was made. It was a rough road to travel. There are hundreds of Spaghetti western films that got made, but only a fistful (yes, I meant to use the word fistful) that survived to gain notorious reputations. Some times the director didn't even have a script, only a story to work with and a strict timetable. The greatest and most widely recognized of these films are of course the ones directed by Leone that starred Clint Eastwood. And if you claim one of the Dollars Trilogy films as your favorite Leone movie than you are certainly a fan of Eastwood. The amazing thing about the flaw of the characters not changing throughout the films is that there is no apparent need for any such change to take place. These movies are just so interesting that the viewer can enjoy them time and again on any occasion.