The Good, The Bad and The Ugly - 2 Disc Special Edition [1966] [DVD]

Practically everyone in the western world must know or have seen this film. This is THE seminal spaghetti western that transcended the already high standards set by Fistful of Dollars, and For a Few Dollars More. Clint Eastwood is icy cool throughout, Lee Van Cleef exudes evil, but for me the acting honours go to Eli Wallach, who comes close to the line, but never crosses it, of parody in portraying the low-life Tuco. The film teems with quotable lines (check out the quotes and trivia section), fabulously atmospheric Morricone music, and a superb panoramic setting against the back-drop of the Americal Civil War. What more can you ask for ?

This masterpiece is the film which defines the Spaghetti Western. Clint Eastwood is good guy Blondie and the other two main characters, Tuco (Eli Wallach) and Angel Eyes (Lee Van Cleef) veer between bad and ugly over the two and half hour duration of this film. The plot is long and winding, but is essentially fairly simple - three guys who don't trust each other trying to get their hands on a consigment of gold. We all know about the music - and Morricone's soundtrack is an undisputed masterpiece. If there is a better marriage of sound and vision in cinema than the last 15 minutes of this film, I have yet to see it. But it's more than just a music video - the direction from the legendary Sergio Leone is out of this world. This is an epic in every sense of the word - the battle against good and bad, a cast of hundreds in the Civil War scenes and camera work which makes no concessions to TV and uses the entire length of the screen. The DVD is good, too. The picture and sound quality are out of this world. The 15 minutes of deleted scenes add nothing, but are a nice curio. You also get the original theatrical trailer. So this isn't a DVD to buy for fancy bells and whistles, but it delivers in spades on the top-quality basics - ie perfect sound and vision. A masterpiece.

I have loved this movie from when I first saw it as a teen, a worryingly long time ago. As I've grown older my tastes have become more sophisticated, and yet this movie only grows in my estimation instead of shrinking. It is simply a masterclass in how to make an enjoyable movie: good story, great camerawork, music, acting and direction, with brilliant flashes of action, emotion and humour. This movie has stood the test of time and long may it continue to do so.

I do have one concern, which is the fashion on DVD and Blu-ray of "restoring" movies to ever longer and longer versions. In this special edition for example we have a restored scene of Tuco meeting up with his gang, the justification being that we otherwise don't know where the bullet fodder comes from: well I'm sorry, but I've gone a lot of years without feeling that lack - and the same goes for some of the other additions. By all means collect these on disk as deleted scenes, but don't mess with the movie I fell in love with. A movie this long is already a hard sell to others I might hope to share the experience with, please don't make it harder for me! It is sacrilege I know, but in an ideal world perhaps this trend could be reversed: get some expert editor who is sympathetic to Leone to tighten this movie up rather than lengthen it, making it easier for a wider audience to appreciate this masterpiece.