For A Few Dollars More

The second installment of the Man with No Name trilogy is the film For a Few Dollars More (two-disc edition).

(For my review of the first film, see: A Fistful of Dollars.)

This time they translated the title from Italian correctly!

Unfortunately, while it's a good title in itself, it doesn't perfectly reflect the content of the movie–in at least two respects.

First, we aren't talking about "a few dollars." The number of dollars that are on the line in this movie is huge. Better than $40,000–which was an enormous sum back in the 1880s/1890s, when the film presumably takes place. As Lee Van Cleef tells Clint Eastwood at one point, he stands to be "rich" if his plans meet with success.

Second, the title doesn't point to a man's-inhumanity-to-man story nearly as well as the first film's true title ("For a Fistful of Dollars"). Why? Because in this film Clint Eastwood's character–the Man with No Name–isn't a drifter out to make a buck and willing to amorally play two sides against each other to get it.

Instead, he's a bounty hunter. And thus, in principle, he is an agent of law and justice.

Sure, the rule of law was shaky in the Old West, and justice was often hard to come by, but the work Eastwood's character does is in principle on the side of the angels.

He may be rough-edged, but he's doing work that needs to be done.

Oddly, perhaps in an attempt to preserve some of the moral ambiguity of the first film, Eastwood and others like him are referred to as "bounty killers" rather than bounty hunters, but it's clear that they aren't simply soulless killers–a fact that the conclusion of the movie more than amply demonstrates.

As a result, this got an A-III (adults) from the U.S. bishops' movie review service rather than an O (morally offensive) or an L (limited adult audiences, which then would have been styled A-IV, adults with reservations, if I understand correctly).

The A-III rating is probably about right.

The fact that the film is on safer moral ground means that I don't have to say as much about the plot and so can leave more plot elements unspoiled in providing a review.

What I will note is that Eastwood's character starts out, again, as a ultracool, supercompetent, Old West Mary Sue, just like he was in the first film.

So how do you top that?

Confront him with his equal: another Mary Sue.

Enter Lee Van Cleef.

Van Cleef plays another ultracool, supercompetent Old West bounty hunter . . . uh, bounty killer.

But he's different than Eastwood, you see? He's older. And he uses different weapons. And while Eastwood is always smoking a cigar, Van Cleef is always smoking a pipe. Get it? These two characters are totally different, while they're also totally the same.

(Memo to both characters: Smoking during a gunfight is a Bad Idea. You don't need extra distractions. I'm sure that this is covered in the NRA gun safety course. Please review!)

And like any two such larger-than-life characters, what's the first thing they have to do? If you've ever read an issue of Marvel Team-Up or Marvel Two-In-One, you guess right: Fight each other!

But before you can say "Epic of Gilgamesh" (or at least "Gilgamesh and Enkidu at Uruk"), they've become friends.

Sort of.

Partners, at least. 

And their partnership will be tested.

Why that is the case is a little hard for me to fathom. With 40,000 1885-dollars on the line, it seems that there is plenty to share! (Especially when it turns out that money isn't the only motive involved here. This isn't just about "a few dollars more.")

We also get more of the stunning visuals and haunting music that are series trademarks. The plot is nicely complicated, though it doesn't have the same element of mystery as in the first film. The first time around Eastwood's character was clearly way ahead of the game and part of the fun was trying to figure out what he was planning. There's some of that here, but not as much.

One thing that does recur–and probably necessarily so–is a scene in which Eastwood gets the snot beaten out of him. Only this time he isn't alone. Van Cleef get's the same treatment–at the same time–again with a maniacally laughing villain in the background.

The reason that this scene is necessary is that we're watching two ultracompetent characters playing their opponents for fools. We need their luck to run out at some point. To create real drama (as opposed to simple wish-fulfillment) the bad guys need to become a credible threat at some point. If you haven't established that early in the picture, you need to do it before the climax or the climax won't have the punch you need.

Back in the 60s, when these came out with a year between them, the similarity probably would have gone unnoticed, but watching the movies back to back I found myself thinking, "Hey, didn't I just watch this same scene—also at the 3/4 mark–in the previous film?"

Another minor annoyance in the film is that–despite the fact that Clint Eastwood is famously playing "the Man with No Name" (something explicitly pointed out as early as the theatrical trailer for the first film)–they appear to give him a name in this film: Manco.

Actually, that's not a name but a nickname. "Manco" is Spanish for "one-armed," and supposedly Eastwood does almost everything in the movie with his left hand, only using his right hand to shoot. Or that's the claim. Personally, I didn't notice that and didn't care enough to keep track. It's too much of a subtlety, as is expecting an English-speaking audience to know what "manco" means in Spanish.

Despite its flaws, For a Few Dollars More is probably the most watchable film of the trilogy. It's less ingenious but more fun than the first film. Watching Eastwood and Van Cleef outcool and play headgames with each other is definitely fun. The film is also less ambitious–and thus less drawn out–than the third film. 

Too bad that, as the middle child of the trilogy, it's probably the most overlooked of the three.