Review of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966) by Jim H — 25 Jul 2014

Three outlaws pursue a cache of gold hidden in a grave.

While canonical, this film is oddly structured with its inciting incident pushed to an hour and fifteen minutes into its three-hour run time. What the film is saying about goodness (or ugliness or badness) is unclear as the "good" is just as bad as the "ugly," but I can imagine that it's attempting to show that morality is more contextual than absolute, creating, as it does, an environment in which everybody is immoral even the Union and Confederate troops, who seem to be passing through this film on their way to another.

Beautifully shot and operatic in scope, the filmmaking is remarkable even if the story-telling is perplexing.

Overall, this classic western isn't bad or good or ugly, just moderately interesting.