Everyone in the West knows The Man with No Name. For where it all started, you've arrived at the right place. A Fistful of Dollars; the very first Sergio Leone-Clint Eastwood collaboration tells one of the three adventures in a trilogy that's exceedingly iconic!
Clint Eastwood fits the bill so well! There's no Western without this man, and there can never be any replacements for him, ever! As The Man with No Name, whatever he does is interesting to watch! Stepping into a ghost town with major ongoing feud between two families, he spots huge opportunities to grind money out of this, and to do some good along the way. To see him outsmart both the Rojos and Baxters was constantly exciting! With his unpredictable moves, suspense and thrills were always present. Mule-apologizing request and corpses at the cemetery trick rank among the best!
It's simply amazing to see how the makers were able to pull this production off on a shoestring budget. From the costumes and set pieces to the finer details of revolver handles' engravings, no expenses were spared. Maybe this was why the sound designs didn't match the onscreen proceedings. You could even see Eastwood's stunt double riding his horse at many points. Voice dubbing straying away from synchronization could be because the feature was originally canned in the director's native language Italian, not too sure.
Ennio Morricone's score and musical cue for our protagonist is evergreen! Long wide tracking shots to capture the gang sprinting in horses were fabulously done! Gun shootouts, hide and seek search party, Baxter family massacre and the climax standoff were real solid action sequences!
What made A Fistful of Dollars a good motion picture that stood the test of time were its making and writing. Punchy dialogues and the great built of anticipation for Ramón (Gian Maria Volontè) the main antagonist were also among the leading success contributors for this Spaghetti Western epic.
"When a man with .45 meets a man with a rifle, you said, the man with a pistol's a dead man. Let's see if that's true."