Review of For a Few Dollars More (1965) by Ben L — 20 Aug 2014

Everything that I liked about A Fistful of Dollars was even better in For a Few Dollars More. The plot of this movie is very simple. A man named El Indio is busted out of prison, and 2 bounty killers are on his trail hoping to collect the big price on Indio's head. The use of music was superb in this film. Most notable is the playful light music box tune utilized to create a great deal of tension and dread. It's a strange contrast that works amazingly. Once again the standoff moments were superb, and Leone threw a lot more of them into this film. I enjoyed how he even put a twist on the standoff by including a scene that had some humor between the 2 bounty killers shooting one-another's hats. My only regret is that they had some emotional stakes they could have added into the final face-off, but they didn't reveal them until the very end. Clint Eastwood and Lee Van Cleef were great in the roles of the 2 protagonists. I did find that it kind of felt like there wasn't enough screen time for both of them, but I appreciated their banter whenever they were on screen together. Perhaps the most surprisingly impressive acting came from Gian Maria Volonte. He adds some real depth to the character of El Indio, you can see he has so much going on behind those eyes.

I appreciated how they gave the villain so much back story. Usually in this type of film I expect the black hats to be one-dimensional, but we get to see some of the things going on in Indio's head and why he is so crazy. I still struggled with the voice dubbing in this movie. It's really distracting, and even though I should, I just can't seem to get past it mentally. It's actually to the point where I'm still noticing it and thinking about it 2 hours into the film. My other issue with For a Few Dollars More is the bullet sound effect. Each shot is way too loud and piercing. It sounds like every bullet is ricocheting off of steel or something, and I literally had to turn the sound down in a couple of the gunfights because that repetitive noise kept ringing out. Now I have to talk about some of the amazing editing decisions that were made in For a Few Dollars More. The way they cut certain images with others and threw in some noises as well was fascinating. The most memorable were all the flashes between character's faces and Indio's wanted poster. They completely revealed the thoughts of the characters without saying a word. There were a few other camera and editing tricks that I thought added a lot to the feel of the movie, but I won't detail them all here. Suffice it to say, this really is a great film, and if you can get past the dubbing it is one you absolutely must see.