A Fistful of Dollars - 1964
Just a lean, mean, Kurosawa-inspired machine. Where the other two members of the Dollars Trilogy are expansive and run longer, Fistful clocks in at under 100 minutes. It's plot is airtight, suffering none of the meandering that very slightly mars its sequel.
Eastwood rolls into town, meets the bartender, spots two rival gangs on the opposite ends of the town square, hatches his brilliant plot, and we're off and running. "Get three coffins ready," he wryly quips to the undertaker Silvanito on his way to the Rojas gang.
Leone understood the genius of Kurosawa's work and even spatially arranged his set to mimic the masterpiece Yojimbo. With that initial shootout and all that followed, spaghetti Westerns were born. Cinema (and my life ) would never be the same.
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