Review of For a Few Dollars More (1965) by Alex K — 16 Aug 2009

Here we go with Part Two. For A Few Dollars More is largely more of the same stuff that Leone delivered in Fistful of Dollars, but amped up a bit. The Man With No Name is back, but this time he's a "bounty killer", a freelance gunner out to make a quick buck taking down some two-bit murderers and robbers and collecting the rewards.

It's a cutthroat industry though, and he's put up against another expert bounty killer with a prestigious reputation, Col. Mortimer played by Lee Van Cleef. It would've been easy for this second film to fall flat on its face by repeating the formula and dragging its feet through the mud, but one of the most genius moves by Leone towards keeping the formula fresh was introducing the protagnoist rivalry displayed between Manco and Mortimer.

Van Cleef is fun as hell to watch, and Mortimer is a rival to The Man With No Name in almost every respect. His prosperity and higher class appearance puts him at immediate odds with the vagrant look of Eastwood, but as the two form their partnership to take down El Indio and share the massive bounty on the heads of him and his gang, the twos chemistry in their characters plays off each other.

But they each have their methods and boundaries, and in the fantastically climactic ending, they each have their motives as well, and that's what in the end sets them apart, keeps them from being clones of each other, and allows us to stick with The Man With No Name as our preferred anti-hero.

The baddies get badder in this sequel as well. El Indio is ruthless and blood thirsty, and his gang has bigger personality and more on the line. Of course all of this isn't to say that For A Few Dollars More tops its predecessor.

It simply manages to tread water hard enough to stay afloat after the exhaustion of pumping its foundings through the first two hours we viewed in A Fistful of Dollars. It gets a little bit grander, but stays mostly the same.

The triumphant themes of Ennio Morricone still waltz through the background, building instruments on top of instruments until the haunting melodies bring to mind both the Man With No Name's lone-wolf-cool-guy persona as well as the inner turmoil which must explode within a man when his life is on the line.

The movie runs a little bit longer, and at points, it feels like it. Characters like the inn-keepers horny wife seem superfluous and time wasting, but they're still worth a little chuckle in the end.

Point is, For A Few Dollars more is epic, entertaining, and beautiful. A fine spaghetti western in the Leone tradition that pits American film tradition against the iconization of that tradition, and combines them under the watchful eye of a visual master.