Category: Film and TV

Thought I'd give a few quick thoughts on the recent two-part Doctor Who story consisting of The Rebel Flesh (episode 5) and The Almost People (episode 6).

I was not originally looking forward to this two-parter. It didn't appear connected with the main season arc, it wasn't written by Steven Moffatt, and it seemed to involve just another monster of the week (or, well, group of monsters of the week). I was expecting it to be not-that-great, possibly on the order of Curse of the Black Spot, which I thought had good parts but was overall kinda lame.

It was with pleasure, then, that as soon as we got very far into The Rebel Flesh that the show turned out to be much more interesting than I first thought.

Basically–and this is not a significant spoiler but merely an explanation of the title monster–the story concerns a 22nd century technology that allows for the standard sci-fi staple of rapidly-produced, fully-functional, fully-memoried adult clones.

Normally I don't like that trope (doesn't fit real-world science), but they get there in an interesting way: The humans in the story don't realize at first that creating such clones is what they're doing. They think they are using a generic biological substance (called "flesh") to receive a temporary impression of a person's physical form and consciousness so that it can act as a temporary, remote-controlled disposable worker body to take on dangerous jobs so the human controller won't have to.

What they don't realize is that the way they technology works, they are actually creating new living beings with the bodily forms and memories of their operators. The Doctor even warns them that these beings may (or do) have souls, qualifying them as the subjects of rights just as much as normal humans.

At this point the episode becomes very interesting from a philosophical and theological perspective. The show's creators are now playing with themes that have important real-world applications.

It doesn't matter how you come up with a new human–they can be produced by marital intercourse the way God designed the process to work, or by fornication, adultery, or rape, or by in vitro fertilization, cloning, or materialization in a nanotech chamber–however you get them, they are real humans who have real human rights that must be respectd.

Even if they aren't quite human, if you make something that's alive (and thus has a soul, or animating principle of some sort) that displays human consciousness (and thus rational thought), you have a being with a rational soul that must be treated as equivalent to a human being in terms of rights and dignity. How it got here is irrelevant. Now that it's here, its rights must be honored.

So this episode is doing what sci-fi does well when it's working at its best–using an imaginative context to re-frame actual, important elements of human experience. Ones that our own technology has (since 1978, when Louise Brown, the first test-tube baby was born) begun to confront us with.

Thereafter follows the expected story of how the humans and their "flesh" dopplegangers ("gangers," as the show calls them) will relate. Naturally, it puts them at odds, but it does so without making either side clear-cut villains. It needed to do that–to show good on both sides–or it would have become unbearably cliche and far less interesting.

There are a lot of nice Doctor Who-esque moments along the way (particularly some nice references to the Doctor's prior incarnations), and while the story is not genius from star to finish (there are paint-by-numbers parts, particular in the second episode, The Almost People), it was much better than I expected.

The ultimate resolution of the human/gangers conflict was decent, though it was tainted by the typical bad sci-fi metaphysics regarding identity (one ganger character ends up substituting for his human counterpart in a way that is not plausible), but that's par for the course.

More interesting was the way the episode linked with the overall season arc. It was much more tightly integrated than first appeared.

Moffatt seems to have been doing at least slight script revisions to other authors scripts so that they will include at least passing references to the season arc (e.g., appearances of the eye-patch lady, the Doctor looking at Amy's positive/negative pregnancy through a medical scanner, references to the Doctor's apparent death in episode 1 of the season), but these have been very brief elements clearly added in script revision. 

The Rebel Flesh/The Almost People turns out to be much more tied to the main arc than that. My guess is that Moffatt proposed the idea and assigned someone else to write it. Either that or it was proposed at an early stage of season development and Moffatt realized how nicely it would fit into his overall plan.

Whatever the case, they end up pulling the triggers on several major season elements, which is good, because it was getting a little tiresome watching the eye-patch lady peek in on Amy every episode or two and watching the Doctor looking suspiciously at Amy with the medical scanner every episode. I was afraid they wouldn't pay these elements off until the end of the series, but they did in part two of the episode, and now I don't mind them. They have a decent relative proportion to the overall shape of the season arc.

I'm very keen to see what they do in the mid-season finale which airs this weekend (in America; it aired last weekend in England).

The ominous title (which is even more ominous based on what we've heard River Song say before) is A Good Man Goes To War.

Here's the bonus, online prequel to that episode:

What do you think?

Last week my home was invaded by bees–AGAIN! This was the third time. Apparently when my place was re-roofed recently, the anti-bee measures (netting blocking access to vents) that had been set up got disturbed, and the little varmints got in again.

Multiple people have been joking me that they keep returning because I'm so sweet. All I can say is, that's very . . . sweet . . . of you to say.

In any event, I was basically offline for several days as a result, and that made me rather tardy on blogging. Apologies.

In other news, as predicted, this week's episode of Doctor Who ("The Doctor's Wife," by Neil Gaiman) was way better than last week's. Nice creepiness, humor, and a poignant twist on classic Doctor Who mythology. Just what I would have expected from Gaiman.

It also addresses a timely issue: Even though the Doctor has been married before (and is a father; he's said so explicitly, and we met his granddaughter and first companion, Susan, who was the title character of Episode 1, "An Unearthly Child"), and regardless of what happens with River Song (strongly hinted to be his future wife), from the perspective of the series as a whole there is really one "character" who has an even greater title to the role of Doctor's wife. And thanks to Gaiman, he's now been properly introduced to her.

Now we've got the two-part "rebel flesh" story before we get back to River, the Silence, and the promised "game-changing" mid-season finale.

For those who have been paying attention to the clues about River Song's past (still in the Doctor's future), the title of the finale is ominous: "A Good Man Goes to War." I'm also anticipating that we're likely to return to the beach, this time with more information about who's inside the space suit. 

In episode 2.10 ("Grey Matters"), Walter asks Astrid to drive him back to the lab so he can hear an album by a band called Violet Sedan Chair (he says listening to it helps him come down from being high on Valium).

In episode 2.21 ("Northwest Passage"), Walter picks up the album–Seven Suns–as pictured here. We also get to hear part of one of the songs ("She's Doing Alright").

In episode 2.23 ("Over There, Part 2"), there is a deleted scene where Peter and Walternate are driving in a car and listening to another song from the album ("Hovercraft Mother"). They also discuss the meaning of the band's music in Peter's life and how the band is different in the alternate universe. Here's the scene:

In episode 3.10 ("The Firefly"), we meet Roscoe Joyce, the keyboardist and songwriter for Violet Sedan Chair.

Now let's put on our grey business suits and fedoras, shave off our hair and eyebrows, flash over to our universe (the real one), and go back in time to Observe an event occurring in April, 2009.

In this event, J.J. Abrams, creator of FRINGE, is guest-editing an issue of Wired magazine. One of the pieces in it is called Musical Mystery Tour: Messages Embedded in Your Favorite Album. It has a timeline of different albums with messages (easter eggs) embedded in them. One item in the timeline is this:

1971 The liner notes on Violet Sedan Chair's album Seven Suns list a missing 11th song, and the penultimate track is rumored to produce hallucinatory effects when played on multiple turntables.

The eleventh song on Seven Suns (according to the back cover of the album, same as held up by Walter in the picture, but here is a clearer version) is titled "Greenmana." The penultimate (next to last) track is titled "Re Fa Mi Si Sol La."

If you look on the album's back cover, you'll also see a circle with part of a piano keyboard in it, only it has an extra black key. This is the logo of Seven Suns' record company, 13th Tone Records.

On April 14, 2009, just few days after the Abrams issue of Wired came out, 13th Tone Records was trademarked.

Now let's flash forward in time to Observe an event in a record store in Seattle in early 2011. A human being named Kiki Kane makes a purchase. It is a copy of Seven Suns, published by 13th Tone in 1971. Like any record that old, it is worn and beaten.

Word spreads on the Internet that copies of Seven Suns are turning up in record stores around America. Some, after they are discovered, are sold on eBay.

FRINGE fans frantically search record stores for more copies.

HERE'S AN INTERESTING ACCOUNT BY A RECORD STORE EMPLOYEE.

Of course, the number of the vinyl records seeded in independent record stores is nowhere near enough to meet fan demand. Fortunately, you can now purchase your very own copy of Seven Suns in .mp3.

BUY IT HERE ON AMAZON. THEY'LL ALSO STORE IT FOR YOU FOR FREE IN THEIR NEWFANGLED "CLOUD DRIVE" SO YOU CAN ALWAYS DOWNLOAD IT AGAIN WHENEVER YOU WANT (E.G., WHEN YOU GET A NEW COMPUTER; YOU WON'T HAVE TO BUY IT AGAIN).

Rumor has it that there are buried clues in the album that relate to what's going to happen on the show. Maybe. If so, they aren't obvious in advance, so you don't have to worry about spoilers. (I have theories on which lyrics may be clues, but I'll save that for another time.) The album is thus safe for people who haven't yet seen season 3 (or 1 or 2 for that matter).

One word about the band's name. "Violet Sedan Chair" may sound more weird to our ears than it is. We typically think of a sedan and a chair as two different things. To us, a sedan is a type of car and a chair is … well … a chair. But this isn't just an arbitrary juxtaposition of nouns.

Historically a sedan chair (also just called a sedan) is what we sometimes think of as a litter–the kind of chair fancy people used to be carried around in so they wouldn't have to walk. Y'know, like this:

Those things used to be big business before taxis were invented, and they're where we get the name for the type of car.

So a violet sedan chair is just a violet one of those.

"Violet Sedan Chair" is also an anagram of "Olive Can Read This."

In any event, as said, you can now own Walter's favorite music. The songs are actually pretty authentic in terms of period sound (and subject matter), the tunes are catchy, and their lyrics are awesome in a cheesy way.

GET THE MUSIC!

My favorites are "Hovercraft Mother," "She's Doing Fine," "500 Years," and "Last Man In Space."

What are yours?

Here's a little Fringe speculation. For those who have not seen any of Season 3, waiting for it to come out on DVD/BlueRay, don't worry. This post won't spoil anything. It's just my putting together a few pieces from Seasons 1 and 2 and guessing at something that may be revealed at some point in the future.

So here goes . . . 

When we first meet Walter Bishop in the Pilot, he has been institutionalized since 1991. Olivia Dunham explains:

An assistant was killed in his lab. Rumors about Dr. Bishop using humans as guinea pigs. He was charged with manslaughter, but was deemed mentally unfit to stand trial.

We later learn more about both the charges Olivia mentions, the assistant who was killed in the lab and the experiments on humans.

In episode 1.12, The No-Brainer (the one where hands come out of computer screens and grab people's heads) a woman named Jessica Warren starts trying to see Walter. She first approaches Peter, who turns her away. After which Olivia says:

I think I know who that woman was… outside.

PETER: What do you think you know?

OLIVIA: That she's the mother of the lab assistant… that was killed in the fire here almost twenty years ago. It's none of my business.

When Jessica Warren finally gets to meet Walter, we learn:

My daughter's name was Carla Warren.

WALTER: Oh,dear.

JESSICA WARREN: Do you remember her?

WALTER: Yes.

JESSICA WARREN: I want to see you because… you were the last person to see my daughter alive, and…I've always wanted to ask… Was there anything else I could know? Anything,anything else…you could tell me about my daughter.

WALTER: She was… a wonderful girl. What I remember… is her smile. She had a wonderful smile.

WALTER: I miss Carla.

JESSICA WARREN: Me,too. I miss her.

(Walter embraces Jessica Warren.)

Okay, so the assistant's name was Carla Warren and she died in a fire in the lab and Walter was there when it happened (something we could probably have inferred from his being charged with manslaughter, anyway).

Now about fires in labs on Fringe.

In episode 1.17, Bad Dreams (the one where Olivia meets a fellow Cortexiphan kid who mentally forces people to stand along the edge of a building's roof with him, with the threat of making them jump), we get the following exchange:

WALTER: Where’s the fire? I always loved that expression, which is curious, since my lab assistant was killed in a fire.

OLIVIA: What can you tell me about Cortexiphan?

WALTER: Oh, that takes me back. I remember 'Belly' whipping up a peyote mash–

OLIVIA: Walter!

WALTER: Cortexiphan was a highly experimental drug. William theorized that it might enhance certain abilities in predisposed children.

PETER: Let me guess– you experimented on people.

WALTER: Oh, no, no. not me. William. We had quite a disagreement about it.

OLIVIA: What abilities?

WALTER: It worked on perception. Carlos Castaneda, Aldus Huxley, Werner Heisenberg, all focused on one single elementary truth. Perception is the key to transformation.

PETER: Reality is both subjective and malleable. If you can dream a better world, you can make a better world.

WALTER: Or perhaps travel between them.

PETER: What did you just say?

OLIVIA: So if Nick Lane was treated with Cortexiphan, he could change reality with his thoughts. He could make somebody do something just by thinking it.

WALTER: Not his thoughts. It’s how you feel that determines your view of the world.

OLIVIA: You’re saying that Cortexiphan worked on feelings.

WALTER: That’s reductive, but essentially, yes.

Olivia then figures out that she also was subjected to a Cortexiphan trial. At the end of the episode:

(rummaging through a storage box, Walter finds some old cassette tapes and starts watching one. haunted by what he sees and hears – a small blonde child sits huddled on the floor while voices dialogue from off the screen)

WILLIAM BELL: Is the incident contained?

FEMALE VOICE: Yes, Doctor Bell.

WILLIAM BELL: How bad?

FEMALE VOICE: Bad.

WILLIAM BELL: Casualties?

FEMALE VOICE: Not sure yet. We can't locate Brenner.

WILLIAM BELL: Is SHE okay?

FEMALE VOICE: SHE is fine.

WILLIAM BELL: Hell, do we know what triggered it?

WALTER: Obviously she was upset, William. (to the child) It's okay. It's alright now. Nobody is angry with you. You didn't do anything bad. It's alright Olive… everythings going to be okay.

(Walter sits silently, alone in the dark lab and stares at the screen)

The transcript doesn't say it, but Olive (Olivia) is huddled in a small, unburned corner of a room which has apparently been subjected to intense fire as part of the "incident" William Bell refers to.

This is confirmed in episode 2.15, Jacksonville (the one where Olivia revisits the day care center where she was experimented upon), where Olivia gets to watch the same video tape and recognizes herself:

OLIVIA: That's me. What happened?

WALTER: This was the first time you saw the other side. You were frightened. Started a fire with your mind. It should have worked. This is the very sort of thing that William and I were preparing for.

Olivia also indicates that she has no memory of the Jacksonville experiments:

I have a freakishly good memory. I remember everything. But not this. There's just nothing that's familiar.

PETER: Maybe that's a good thing.

And earlier in the ep, Walter also commented on her not remembering her Cortexiphan-produced abilities:

OLIVIA: Walter, when did I see things from the other side?

WALTER: Twenty-six years ago when you were a little girl. The Cortexiphan Trials. As I've said, the drug worked on perception. Of the thirty children that William Bell and I experimented on, you were the first with the ability to identify things from the other side. We gave you the ability.

PETER: Walter, you were conducting illegal drug trials on children. Don't make that sound like charity work.

OLIVIA: Was it me who described it as a glimmer? Well, I can't see it anymore.

WALTER: Because I believe you stopped wanting to. When you did, there were consequences, but I was able to elicit the ability once. I believe I may be able to do it again.

So Walter's lab assistant, Carla Warren, died in 1991 in a laboratory fire and Walter was there.

Olivia, who would have been around 12 in 1991, was given Cortexiphan as a child and, among other things, occasionally started fires with her mind (pyrokinesis) when frightened or upset. However, there were "consequences" to her use of the Coretexiphan abilities, and she decided she didn't want them any more–and today has no memory of the experiments.

What's the dramatically obvious way to connect these facts up?

The very next episode, 2.16, Peter, is the one in which we get a flashback to 1985, when Peter was a boy–and we get to meet Carla Warren for the first time, six years before her death in the lab fire.

My guess is that, at some point in the future, we will have a flashback episode to 1991, when Olive is 12, and the experiments have been relocated from Jacksonville, Florida to Harvard, where the lab fire occurred.

Something momentous will be at stake (very possibly with Observer involvement). Walter and Olive and Carla will be in the lab. Something horrible will happen, pushing Olive over the edge and triggering her pyrokinetic abilities. Carla (who was likely trying to stop Walter from doing something, possibly to Olive) will die. 

Olivia and Walter live, but both will be shattered. Olive will either repress all memory of the Cortexiphan trials or someone (possibly William Bell) will cause them to go dormant.

Walter will have either just had William Bell perform the operation to remove bits from his brain or he will have it immediately after this event, as it is what frightened him of what he was becoming.

In any event, the aftermath of the event will find him mentally and emotionally shattered and he will be committed to St. Claire's for the next 17 years.

Until Olivia Dunhman walks into St. Claire's and recruits him to help solve the case in the Pilot episode.

Now, there are other ways this could work. Other Cortexiphan kids have been shown to have pyrokinesis, but c'mon! This is the obvious, dramatically satisfying way to do it.

How did Carla Warren die?

My money is that it was Olivia. In the lab. With the pyrokinesis.

The final installment of the Man with No Name trilogy is the film The Good, the Bad & the Ugly (two-disc edition).

(For my review of the first two films, see: A Fistful of Dollars and For a Few Dollars More.)

There are two things that, if you know them before  you watch the picture, you will probably enjoy it much more:

1) Despite being the third part of the trilogy, this film is not a continuation of the story of the characters we've met. It's about different characters who are reminiscent of the ones in the first two films.

2) This film is really long, so be prepared for a marathon movie-watching session. The American version is 2 hours and 40 minutes long, and the Italian version is apparently a full 3 hours (compared to the 90 minutes of the first film and the 2 hours of the second).

I didn't know either of these before I started watching, and I found my enjoyment hampered as a result. I'd probably like it more on a second watching.

Why isn't this a continuation of the characters established in the first two films? Two reasons: First, at the end of the second film Clint Eastwood's character had become rich. He therefore would have no need to continue bounty hunting, which is–and which certainly was then–a dangerous and unpleasant profession.

Second, and more importantly, Sergio Leone wanted to set this story during the American Civil War. This is earlier than the classic period of the "Old West" genre, which focuses on the years from about 1870 to 1900, which saw great western expansion and settlement, in significant measure driven by the need to get out of the economically impoverished, Reconstruction-era South.

Leone therefore needs to yank us back about 25 years in time from when the first two films were apparently set, to what seems to be approximately 1863 (plus or minus a year).

Why does Leone want to set this film during the Civil War?

Because he's an Italian director and he wants to make a point about the brutality and senselessness of war. What other reason could there be?

The thing is, though … it helps first-time watchers if you clearly communicate right from the beginning that we're in the 1860s rather than the 1880s and that these are not the same characters we met in the first two movies. If you don't tell them that then the viewers will experience cognitive dissonance until they figure it out.

That takes some time due to Leone's slow-pacing of this film. We don't even meet Clint Eastwood's character until something like 30 minutes into the movie. He's the last of the three title characters to be introduced.

Speaking of which, let's talk about the title. The films in this trilogy seem to be plagued with title problems. In themselves, the titles are awesome. A Fistful of Dollars. For a Few Dollars More. The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. Good titling!

But the titles don't always actually fit the movie. And that's especially true in this case.

Admittedly, they came up with a better title for this one than what the purely descriptive one would have been: "For a Heaping Huge Pile of Dollars"–which is what the stakes are this time ($200,000 in gold, in 1863 dollars).

Leone loved the title they finally came up with for this movie. He loved it so much that–just to make sure you appreciate it–he explicitly identifies Clint Eastwood, Lee Van Cleef, and Eli Wallach as (respectively) "the Good," "the Bad," and "the Ugly."

He does this at the beginning and the end of the film by writing these words on the screen during a freeze frame of each character.

How is it, then, that the theatrical trailer misidentifies Wallach as "the Bad" and Van Cleef as "the Ugly"? Leone made the identifications pretty clear.

The problem is with the identifications themselves. On the one hand, none of the three characters in the film is actually good. They are all vicious criminals out to make a buck.

Despite being explicitly identified as "the Good," Clint Eastwood's very first act in the film is to gun down three innocent men to keep them from lawfully claiming a bounty that he wants to claim himself. While he does do one genuinely altruistic thing in the movie (comfort a dying soldier toward the end, at very little cost to himself), he is–as the final line of the movie says–"a dirty S.O.B." (Only the final line doesn't say "S.O.B." but what it stands for.)

In terms of moral rectitude, Eli Wallach's character actually has a better claim on the term "good." He does bad things, but it's clear that he has a more robust conscience than the other two title characters, and while he isn't above taking revenge, he doesn't gratuitously kill people like the other two.

Ultimately the primary good that Eastwood has in comparison to the other two is good looks. Both Wallach and Van Cleef could vie for the title "the Ugly" (as the theatrical trailer made clear).

The one identification that is really solid, though, is "the Bad." 

That is Van Cleef's character in spades. He is a brutal, sociopathic killer whose villainy dwarfs those of his title companions.

In this movie.

The thing is, he wasn't like that at all in the previous movie. He was a good guy. Gooder, even, than Eastwood's character! Which only adds to the cognitive dissonance until you figure out he's not playing the same character.

And it's not like Leone helps you with this. The Eastwood and Van Cleef characters are meant to evoke the ones they played in the second film. Eastwood still wears the same hat, the same brown poncho, and smokes the same little cigars. Van Cleef is still better dressed and smoking a pipe. And they're both still gunslingers. Visually they are the same, but they're not the same people.

It's like … Invasion of the Character Snatchers or something.

Or at least like an episode of The Goon Show, where protagonist Neddie Seagoon can be prime minister of England one week and a private detective the next and a postal inspector the third.

The basic plot of the movie is as old as The Pardoner's Tale: Three thieves competing for a stash of gold.

It's a well told tale in the sense that it has a lot of interesting, inventive stuff in it. There are twists and surprises. In fact, given the length of the film, one at times feels like there may be a few too many twists and surprises.

The Eli Wallach character is the true soul of the movie. It's more about him than about the other two. And he is an interesting, rambunctious, comedic, and annoying character. He is capable of getting the best laughs of the film and the most pathos. You feel for him in a way you can't for Van Cleef or Eastwood–the first because he is pure evil and the second because he is pure stoic.

Sergio Leone reportedly said, "I like Clint Eastwood because he has only two facial expressions: one with the hat, and one without it."

Like the previous two movies, his one has amazing music and scenery, both effectively used by Leone. 

In fact, it may have a little too much music. Leone reportedly could not bring himself to cut some shots because he wanted to let the music play out, thus adding to the film's bulk and slowing its pacing.

The pacing is the single biggest flaw in terms of craft with the film. Leone has become too self-indulgent in the film. There is a point, about two hours into the movie, where they've set up all the pieces they need for the climax and they could proceed directly to the conclusion, but you realize, "Oh, no! They're going to insert a whole 'nother act before they let us get to the conclusion! Just so that the director can make his 'futility of war' statement, we have to take a big, huge plot detour."

When we finally get to the climax, though, it's a good one. And, oddly, the pacing isn't the problem that it has been up to now.

I didn't believe it at first but the climactic, Mexican standoff between the three characters in this film really does go on for five minutes! (I timed it.)

I thought it could have been cut a little, but it is so gripping that I felt like a character in a Monty Python sketch, declaring, "That was never five minutes just now!"

Oh, and speaking of humor, that's one thing that this movie has much more than the other two. It really does have multiple laugh-out-loud moments and some great zingers in the script.

Like its predecessors,it is both compelling and flawed. It's easy to see why it is considered a classic of the genre. It's by far the most ambitious of the three films, which leads both to its best and worst elements.

Morally it is unsatisfying. Clint Eastwood just is not "the Good" that the title promises. He's not even "the Good" relative to the two other characters. Eli Wallach is just as good as Eastwood. and the very ending (after the showdown is over), while not sad like that of the Pardoner's Tale, comes off as contrived.

Still, it's a landmark film in the history of Westerns, and it's loaded with style and camp appeal.

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.

I recently watched the Man with No Name trilogy–also known as the Dollars trilogy–starring Cling Eastwood. 

This series originally came out when I was a baby (pre- and post-born), and if my parents took me to it when it was in theaters, I have no memory of it.

What I do remember is my dad's copy of the album (remember vinyl?) and the haunting, wailing, chanting music that was used to score the films.

I never saw them growing up (this was pre-cable and pre-VCR), but I finally got around to watching them, and thought I'd review them here.

The first film–A Fistful of Dollars (2-disc edition here)–features Clint Eastwood as a wandering gunslinger with no money. Not surprising, since the film was inspired by Akira Kurosawa's film Yojimbo, which features Toshiro Mifune as a ronin, a wandering samurai who doesn't serve any master.

Clint Eastwood's character has no name. What he also doesn't have is a well defined sense of morals. Upon learning that the Mexican town in which he has arrived is dominated by two rival families–the Rojas and the Baxters–he decides to make money for himself by playing the two sides off against each other. He alternately hires himself out two both groups, sometimes at the same time.

And large numbers of people die as a result.

This was part of director Sergio Leone (operating under the absurdly Americanesque pseudonym "Bob Robertson")'s effort to reinvent the Western film genre using more morally ambiguous characters and even anti-heroes.

The film's point is somewhat blunted by the slight mistranslation of the title from Italian. In Italian the title would literally translate as "For a Fistful of Dollars"–i.e., that's why Clint Eastwood's character started the bloodbath in the first place, a grim statement about man's capacity for inhumanity.

The Man with No Name isn't completely sociopathic, however. He does do one, major, genuinely selfless thing in the movie, which is to help a captive family escape. When the mother in the family asks him why, he says that he knew someone like her once (his own mother?) but there was no one there to help.

Ironically, this proves to be his big mistake. Up to this point, the character has been a total, supercompetent, gun-slinging Mary Sue, who can not only shoot better than anyone else but who is also five steps ahead of the people on both sides.

To keep the character from being totally consumed by Mary Sueness, he needs to be taken down a peg, and when his act of kindness is discovered Eastwood is beaten to a pulp while one of the villains laughs maniacally.

Eventually one of the families massacres the other, and Eastwood–in an impressive and inventive final duel–brings a kind of belated justice to the conclusion.

At the end of the movie he rides off with his dollars (which are rather more than a fistful; he made out well from these two families) and the audience is left to contemplate the morality–or lack of it–of his actions.

This got an O (morally offensive) rating from the U.S. bishops' film review service.

Though I wonder if it would today. Back in the 1960s, when this came out, the kind of brutal violence that the film contains would have been quite a bit more shocking than today.

Actually, the violence is amazingly bloodless. It's basically "bang, you're dead." One shot per customer; no visible wounds; the victim falls over and doesn't move again. What's startling is that Eastwood will do it to three people right in a row–bang! bang! bang! And we get a hip-level camera shot, so it's rather like watching a first-person shooter game.

Also, if the title had been properly translated it would have been clearer that the filmmakers are showing what man can do for a fistful of dollars but they're not approving of it.

In other words, we've got a man's inhumanity to man story here.

I probably would have given it an L (limited adult audience) rating.

While Leone was trying to get away from some of the cliches of Westerns, he was only partially successful. The film embraces as many cliches as it eschews.

On the positive side, the film has beautiful visuals (who knew that Andalusia in Spain looks so much like the deserts of Northern Mexico and the American Southwest?), haunting music, an intricate plot with a good number of twists and surprises (which I have not spoiled), and something to think about: How justifiable–or not–are Eastwood's actions at different turns.

It's easy to see why it was popular (very popular), why it's considered an iconic film, a classic of the genre–and why it got a couple of sequels.