Movie Review: The Salamander (1981)

Genre: Political Thriller  
Director: Peter Zinner  
Starring: Franco Nero, Anthony Quinn, Martin Balsam, Eli Wallach, Christopher Lee, Sybil Danning, Claudia Cardinale  
Running Time: 96 minutes  

Synopsis: In Italy, a military general is murdered, triggering concerns about a potential Fascist takeover plot. Colonel Dante Matucci (Franco Nero) of the internal security services investigates with the help of his mentor Captain Steffanelli (Martin Balsam). The murdered general's mistress Lili Anders (Sybil Danning) is revealed to be a spy for leftist sympathizers, and Dante's further sleuthing leads him to industrialist Bruno Manzini (Anthony Quinn), the scheming General Leporello (Eli Wallach), Director of Counterintelligence Prince Baldasar (Christopher Lee), and a torture specialist known as The Surgeon. Eventually, Dante's life is threatened as he gets close to uncovering a dangerous conspiracy. 

What Works Well: This Lew Grade production adapts the Morris West book with no shortage of ambition and an admirable deep dive into political machinations, Italian style. The entirely-on-location cinematography captures sun-drenched landmarks and lavish interiors without succumbing to travelogue stereotypes. Jerry Goldsmith's music score adds further gloss, but the main attraction is a dream international cast, none of them stretching but all of them competent. 

What Does Not Work As Well: Despite the efficient running time, the pace is plodding, most scenes consisting of stiff individual interactions between Matucci and a lineup of shady suspects. A few bursts of action attempt to punctuate proceedings, but these are more clumsy than effective. Few of the plot details make any sense, with the antagonists suspiciously passive as the investigation unfolds. In a world populated by the villains on display here, Captain Matucci would have disappeared in short order.

Key Quote:

Matucci: Do something Italian, Lili. Change sides.

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Movie Review: Zig Zag (1970)

A crime thriller, Zig Zag (also known as False Witness) features a devilishly clever plot and frustratingly bad execution.

Insurance agent Paul Cameron (George Kennedy) believes he is going to die from a brain tumour. Determined to augment his life insurance payout and leave his wife Jean (Anne Jackson) with as much money as possible, he devises an elaborate plan to act as a shadowy informant and incriminate himself in the unsolved murder of a business executive, secretly channelling the reward-for-information money to Jean.

Paul is arrested and charged with murder. Defence lawyer Mario Gambretti (Eli Wallach) is oblivious to his client's objective and does his best to exonerate him. But when Paul ends up in hospital and undergoes emergency surgery, all his good plotting is threatened and he suddenly has to come up with an alternative, this time involving finding the real murderer.

A good example of a plot too clever for its own good, Zig Zag does not lack for smarts. The John T. Kelley script is filled with numerous twists, and allows its many fiendish secrets to seep out in small, almost casual increments. Director Richard A. Colla adds mystery by minimizing dialogue and focussing on intricate build-up, and adds disorientation with frequent jumps in time between the present and past.

The film's two halves offer distinct mysteries meshed into the ambition to maximize payout upon death. Paul first concocts a fake informant to incriminate himself and meticulously plants evidence accordingly. Then the focus switches to his frantic attempts to unveil the real culprit behind an unsolved murder, with the victim by all accounts earning his fate.

But all the narrative ingenuity is thwarted by weak delivery. Perhaps due to budget limitations, Colla focuses endlessly on needless details, and shortchanges important elements. Prolonged scenes are bogged down at the prison where Paul is admitted to await trial, and then (in flashback) at a noisy hut where he plants evidence. Meanwhile, essential plot details are barely mentioned, and the second half falls apart in fairly spectacular fashion. Paul conducts his amateur investigation of a high profile case with astonishing speed, and the antagonists remain a jumbled mess of undefined men and women. 

George Kennedy grabs a rare lead role opportunity and bulldozes his way through proceedings with appropriate inelegance. Eli Wallach is suitably animated as a lawyer sensing something is not quite right with his client's story.

Despite a surplus of intrigue, Zig Zag goes this way, then that, and unfortunately ends up lost.



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Movie Review: Winter Kills (1979)

A conspiracy thriller with satirical elements, Winter Kills boasts a superlative cast but fails on all other counts.

Nick Kegan (Jeff Bridges) is the half-brother of Tim Kegan, the ex-president of the United States who was assassinated 19 years prior in Philadelphia, supposedly by lone gunman Willie Arnold. Tim's rise to power was engineered by his wealthy industrialist father Pa (John Huston), who resents Nick's lack of interest in politics. The Kegan empire is managed by a technology and information hub under the watchful eye of the mysterious Cerruti (Anthony Perkins).

Now Nick witnesses the deathbed confession of assassin Fletcher (Joe Spinell), who reveals he was part of the multi-rifle hit squad that killed Tim. Nick retrieves Fletcher's rifle as evidence, and immediately his life is endangered. He seeks the help of his girlfriend and journalist Yvette (Belinda Bauer) to delve into the case, while Pa arranges for Nick to meet with a variety of shadowy characters including eccentric power broker Z.K. Dawson (Sterling Hayden) and mob boss Frank Mayo (Tomas Milian).

Nick learns about the history and Cuban connections of small-time hood Joe Diamond (Eli Wallach), who was hired to kill Arnold. But the more Nick investigates Tim's death, the less sense the entire case makes.

Having overcome a bizarre three-year production history involving drug and soft-core porn money, a murdered producer, and multiple shutdowns due to financial problems, Winter Kills is still a lavish production with a gorgeously rich aesthetic. Director William Richert and cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond create grand sets suitable for the unconstrained wealth of the Kegan family, including mansions and private hospital and hotel rooms consistent with the rewards of infinite income backed by hidden corruption.

And the luxury surrounds a cast brimming with talent. Almost every role is occupied by a recognizable name, with none other than an uncredited Elizabeth Taylor making a silent appearance in a couple of key scenes late on. Toshiro Mifune, Dorothy Malone, Richard Boone and Ralph Meeker are among the other performers adding depth and interest in every corner.

But unfortunately, the adaptation of Richard Condon's book falls short where it matters. Winter Kills is intended as a satirical jab at Kennedy assassination conspiracy theories with an added layer of thrills and shocking moments, but never gets the balance right. Too often Richert's script plays straight, dour, and dumb, people dying all around Nick, his life endangered at every turn, and every revelation erasing what went before it. What may have been intended as dry humour contracts into emotionless crustiness.

The self-defeating foolishness of various overlapping and contradictory conspiracy scenarios is the point, but Richert never pauses long enough to properly celebrate the moment. The film blurs into a succession of irrelevant names from the past and present pointing the finger at each other, then dying, with no consequence or impact.

Meanwhile John Huston as Pa is given free rein to munch the scenery with an exhibition of absolute power filled with absurdist winks. Huston appears to be in a movie all his own, none of the other characters sharing the twinkle in his eye.

With Nick maintaining a fast investigative pace and Jeff Bridges shirtless about 50 percent of the time (and sometimes altogether nude), Winter Kills maintains a wacky watchability, but only as witness to the curiously constructed narrative carnage.

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Movie Review: The Domino Principle (1977)

A conspiracy thriller, The Domino Principle (also known as The Domino Killings) takes forever to get to the point only to realize it does not have one.

Decorated Vietnam War veteran Roy Tucker (Gene Hackman) is serving a long prison sentence at San Quentin for murdering the former husband of his wife Ellie (Candice Bergen). He passes the time enduring the tall tales of his talkative cellmate Spiventa (Mickey Rooney). Tagge (Richard Widmark) and Ross (Eddie Albert) represent mysterious interests and start visiting Tucker in prison, delving into his background with a promise of an early release in exchange for unspecified assignments.

Eventually Tucker and Spiventa gain their freedom in a staged escape. Transported to Costa Rica, Tucker is provided with a fake identity and bank account and reunited with Ellie at a lavish villa. He also meets retired General Reser (Eli Wallach), another of Tagge's associates. Relocated to Long Beach, Tucker balks at the designated assassination assignment, endangering Ellie's life.

Director and producer Stanley Kramer, known for his cerebral socially conscious dramas from decades past, steps way outside his comfort zone and predictably stumbles. The Domino Principle clambers onto the post-Watergate, post-Vietnam pile of films tapping into government mistrust, but the adaptation of Adam Kennedy's book is a vacuous exercise in hinting at something that never happens.

The premise of dark hands manipulating everyone and everything is used as an excuse to explain nothing, and instead the film settles down first as a prolonged prison interview and then a travelogue hopping from San Francisco to Costa Rica then Long Beach. The cinematography by Fred J. Koenekamp and Ernest Laszlo is often spectacular and always bright and colourful, but cannot hide the absence of actual content.

Tagge, Ross and General Reser represent a heavy-hitting trio of mystery men (and talented actors) who never reveal anything beyond shuffling Tucker from one location to another. The assassination assignment is inferred, neither the victim nor the cause ever discussed. And Tucker's insubordination at every turn, attempting with decreasing success to wrangle free from the men now controlling his life, becomes the tired focus of the film.

All of which is a waste of a stellar cast. Gene Hackman, Richard Widmark and Eli Wallach all deserved better, and even Eddie Albert and Mickey Rooney deliver better-than-usual work here, all of it unfortunately misdirected. The biggest victim is Candice Bergen, miscast and struggling mightily in deglamorized role.

The Domino Principle bungles both the set-up and the knock-down.

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Movie Review: The Holiday (2006)

A Christmastime romantic comedy with two love stories unfolding simultaneously in London and Los Angeles, The Holiday offers soothing vanilla entertainment and achieves all its objectives in an attractive, star-filled package.

In London, the emotionally fragile Irene (Kate Winslet) works for the Telegraph newspaper and harbours a hopeless crush on work colleague Jasper (Rufus Sewell). He keeps her hanging as a side-interest while pursuing romance and marriage with another woman. In Los Angeles, the independent and confident but emotionally cold Amanda (Cameron Diaz) is a producer of movie trailers; she kicks out her live-in boyfriend Ethan (Edward Burns) once she discovers his infidelity. With Christmas approaching, both Irene and Amanda decide on a break. They connect online and agree to a two week house exchange.

Amanda is quickly lonely at Irene's small and quaint cottage in the English countryside, but her mood brightens considerably when the half-drunk Graham (Jude Law), Irene's brother, unexpectedly stumbles through the door. Meanwhile, in Los Angeles Irene meets her next door neighbour, the elderly Hollywood screenwriter Arthur Abbott (Eli Wallach). She also connects with Miles (Jack Black), a film score composer. Amanda and Graham jump into a physical relationship before settling down to get to know each other, while Irene is more circumspect. She helps Arthur rediscover his passion while he helps to rebuild her self-esteem, and she starts to befriend the jovial Miles.

Directed and co-written by Nancy Meyers, The Holiday is an inoffensive and high quality double romantic comedy. Within the confines of the genre, the premise is reasonably fresh, the humour understated, the performances generally excellent, and the film oozes a rich syrup of distinction.

Meyers gains the bonus of two stories in one movie, and avoids many of the cringe inducing cliches that often plague romantic comedies. The Holiday has are no contrived misunderstandings and no sudden conflicts between the lovers that need to be resolved before the end credits. Instead the romance progressions are remarkably calm, and the film offers four mature, life-tested adults (and one older gentleman) grappling with disappointments, opportunities and affairs of the heart.

The film finds a few highlight gems. When Amanda decides to track down Graham at his house and uncovers his backstory, what she finds is a perfectly imperfect set-up. Graham is at once made more real and more complicated, offering much more than Amanda bargained for and redefining her parameters of what love can mean. The comedy highlight is a three-way overseas phone call with Iris discovering the hazards of call waiting while trying to simultaneously communicate with her brother and Amanda.

Kate Winslet, Cameron Diaz and Jude Law deliver accomplished and committed performances, with Diaz perhaps emerging with the best glow and impeccable comic timing. Jack Black suffers in comparison and is often out his league, not helped by an underwritten role. Eli Wallach adds a potent shot of veteran talent, as his Arthur Abbott takes on the task of educating Irene about the power that resides within women through Hollywood's back catalogue.

At 15 minutes over two hours, the film is overlong, and suffers from a gloss that may be too shiny, situations and locales a little too perfect, and characters too likeable. But The Holiday is a greeting card of a film, the type that warms the heart and induces a smile when delivered with care and genuine affection.

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Movie Review: The Misfits (1961)

A long-winded contemporary western drama, The Misfits sadly proved to be the last film for both Clark Gable and Marilyn Monroe. It is an almost insufferable exercise in navel gazing, a sorry story about lonely people looking for solace in all the wrong places.

In Reno, Nevada, Roslyn (Monroe) finalizes her divorce, with the emotional support of Isabelle (Thelma Ritter). They then meet truck driver Guido (Eli Wallach), and through him his friend Gay Langland (Gable), an old fashioned cowboy. Isabelle tries to get Guido's romantic attention, but he is immediately smitten by the beautiful Roslyn, who in turn is both fascinated and repulsed by Gay's blatant machismo.

Guido offers Roslyn his secluded desert home to de-stress from her divorce, after which Gay and Guido invite Roslyn to join them as they attempt to round up wild Mustang horses in the desert wilderness. On the way they meet Gay's old friend Perce Howland (Montgomery Clift), a penniless rodeo cowboy. As Roslyn finds herself attracting the attention of all three men, the group joins Perce as he competes at a local rodeo event, before heading to a dry lake to try and corral some horses.

Written by Arthur Miller (Monroe's soon to be ex-husband) and directed by John Huston (apparently hard on the bottle), The Misfits is a project that just did not work. Miller's script is talky, dreamy and exceedingly laborious. Roslyn, Guido, Gay and Perce are uninteresting and unintelligent, all the behaviour on display conveying boring people too quick to express shallow emotions and waves of anger. The attractions are inexplicable except as acts of desperation, never a good basis for attempted romance. And the love/hate attitude that Roslyn displays towards Gay is simply irrational. Either she enjoys his alpha male persona or she does not, and Miller can't decide what kind of man his leading lady craves.

Huston's directing is stale. Scenes go on for too long, the story never finds an arc to hold on to, and the climactic but endless Mustang chase in the desert is filled with cowboys-never-change hokum.

The film's many failures are quite the pity, because the acting talent is clearly abundant. Despite any end-of-life issues facing Gable and Monroe, they both effortlessly dominate the screen. Gable is his usual uncompromising presence, filling his scenes with larger than life male bravado and living proudly according to his code. Monroe is a wispy, breathy presence, displaying nothing but vulnerability in what is either a terrific acting performance or simply by placing herself on the screen. Wallach, Clift and Ritter lend plenty of talent in support, all three conveying lives bereft of purpose and drifting towards a great emptiness.

Gable died within two weeks of the end of filming after suffering a heart attack. Monroe died within 18 months, having never completed another film. The Misfits is unfortunately more of a final crooked memorial for two enduring legends, rather than a successful movie.

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The Movies Of Eli Wallach

All movies starring Eli Wallach and reviewed on the Ace Black Movie Blog are linked below:

Baby Doll (1956)

The Magnificent Seven (1960)

The Misfits (1961)

How The West Was Won (1962)

How To Steal A Million (1966)

The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly (1966)

MacKenna's Gold (1969)

Zig Zag (1970)

The Domino Principle (1977)

The Deep (1977)

Firepower (1979)

Winter Kills (1979)

The Salamander (1981)

The Godfather Part III (1990)

Mystic River (2003, uncredited)

The Holiday (2006)

The Ghost Writer (2010)

Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps (2010)

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Movie Review: The Magnificent Seven (1960)

A highlight in the long history of the western genre, The Magnificent Seven opened the new decade with a marked departure from some long standing traditions. With heroic characters now aware of their deeply flawed heroism, a path was created for much more nuanced examinations of the men of the west.

A peaceful Mexican village is being harassed by the bandit Calvera (Eli Wallach) and his band of rowdy men. Calvera rides into town at regular intervals, stealing what he needs but leaving the local farmers just enough to survive and tend their crops for another season, in readiness for his next raid. Fed up, the farmers decide to hire the mercenary Chris (Yul Brynner) to collect a group of gunfighters who can act as village guards.

Chris teams up with another fast-draw Vin (Steve McQueen), knife expert Britt (James Coburn), the resilient Bernardo (Charles Bronson), old pal Harry (Brad Dexter) and the supposedly dependable Lee (Robert Vaughn). The young and over-eager Mexican Chico (Horst Buchholz) insists on joining them, despite Chris not believing him to be good enough. The seven men provide the farmers with weapons and training, and fortify the village with traps and defences. But the wily Calvera has a few tricks up his sleeve, and scaring him off will be no easy task.

In adapting Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai (1954), director and producer John Sturges composes the heart of The Magnificent Seven as an exploration of the gunman's psyche. The story is a stout frame deployed to carry an unusually lucid trial of life through the barrel of the gun, and Sturges allows his seven men the opportunity to introspectively question their purpose. The dialogue between the men, and the interaction with the villagers, gradually shifts the narrative of heroism from gunman to farmer, the former riding out their days with little purpose except to kill, the latter laying the foundations for a better future.

Chico: Your gun has gotten you everything you have. Isn't that true? Hmm? Well, isn't it true?
Vin: Sure. Everything. After a while, you can call bartenders and Faro dealers by their first names. Maybe two hundred of 'em. Rented rooms you live in, five hundred. Meals eaten in hash-houses, a thousand. Home, none. Wife, none. Kids... none. Prospects, zero. Suppose I left anything out?
Chris: Yeah. Places you're tied down to, none. People with a hold on you, none. Men you step aside for, none.
Lee: Insults swallowed, none. Enemies, none.
Chris: No enemies?
Lee: Alive.
Chico: Now that's the kind of arithmetic I like!
Chris: Yeah. I did too, at your age.

The mercenaries accept their assignment for next to no money. They all arrive at their separate reasons to help impoverished Mexican villagers when there are plenty of better-paying work opportunities. It's the one, thin difference between men like Chris and the Calveras of the world: Chris convinces a bunch of gunslingers to fight for a cause, while Calvera's only cause appears to be living off others and causing mayhem.

Chris, Bernardo, and Lee emerge as the most interesting characters. As Chris, Yul Brynner, all in black, is the good guy keenly aware of the limitations of his chosen life, wandering from one adventure to the next with no further expectations of a docile existence. The intelligence behind Brynner's eyes makes it easy to imagine that Chris could have been a doctor or sheriff had he chosen different paths, but that he is now content making positive contributions using the wrong methods.

Bernardo is adopted by the children of the village, and unusually for a Bronson role, Bernardo is the most articulate in communicating life's rights and wrongs, peeling away the fake glory of the gunman and pointing the kids in the direction of their parents to find real heroes. It is an affecting role of muscular ability masking uncommon wisdom.

Bernardo (to the three children from the village): You think I'm brave because I carry a gun? Well, your fathers are much braver, because they carry responsibility — for you, your brothers, your sisters, and your mothers. And this responsibility is like a-a big rock that weighs a ton. It bends and it twists them until finally it buries them under the ground.

Robert Vaughn's Lee is not as well developed, but probably the most interesting of the seven men. It emerges that Lee's life of killing has caught up with him, and unbeknownst to Chris, he has lost his nerve. Whether he will regain his ability to fire a gun again remains an open question, and as he ponders his purpose in life Vaughn provides Lee with a haunted presence, a gunfighter not killed by the enemy but dead from the inside, all the same.

Steve McQueen is all cocky smiles and wise-cracks as Vin, a star-making role packed with charisma, but absent the depth of some of the other men. Vin is where Chris was ten years ago, still enjoying the benefits of a life without responsibilities, and not yet aware of all the costs. On the wrong side of banditry Eli Wallach allows Calvera to be a somewhat reluctant gangster, brutal enough to steal from defenceless farmers but never heartless enough to close the deal on pure evil.

The magic of the movie lies in the mixing of the cerebral elements with excellent set-pieces. Sturges works from a diverse palette, finding tension in an early set-piece as Chris and Vin have a meeting of the minds to counter some racism around a cemetery, passing through a euphoric initial battle between the emboldened farmers and the bandits, and ending with a spectacular few-against-many raid by the seven to finish the job or die trying. The action scenes are crisply edited, cohesively assembled, and noisy with the sounds of multiple guns and frantically galloping horses.

To complete the movie's enchantment, Elmer Bernstein composed a legendary western music score unlike any before or since, a rousing, dauntless theme of chivalrous heroism. When seven men come face to face with their moment of destiny, they will gallop to a rousing tune of masculine gallantry.

Chris: The Old Man was right. Only the farmers won. We lost. We'll always lose.

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Movie Review: Baby Doll (1956)

A bizarre yet delectable descent into a world of twisted and simmering sexual tension, Baby Doll became one of the most controversial films of its day, and still packs a wallop. The story of the young virgin wife, lustfully frustrated older husband, and the dark stranger who explodes into their life starts out strange and swirls in ever tighter loops of dangerous depravity.

Archie Lee Meighan (Karl Malden) is a down-on-his-luck cotton gin owner, living in a large but unkempt mansion deep in the south. He has been married for four year to the much younger Baby Doll (Carroll Baker), but the marriage will only be consummated tomorrow, when Baby Doll turns 20. Archie Lee's sexual frustration has reduced him to peeping on his young wife through holes in the wall, as she sucks her thumb while sleeping in a crib, wearing short nightgowns.

With his furniture repossessed and facing financial ruin, Archie Lee attempts to destroy the competition by burning the cotton gin belonging to Silva Vacarro (Eli Wallach), a suave Sicilian business man. Silva is quickly onto Archie, and takes his time pretending to befriend him while in reality seeking to seduce Baby Doll on the way to destroying everything that Archie cares for.

Based on Tennessee Williams' play 27 Wagons Full Of Cotton, and adapted for the screen by Williams apparently with help from director Elia Kazan, Baby Doll is a momentous slow burn under the searing southern sky. Banned from theatres upon release but nevertheless celebrated for its artistic achievement, the film marked the start of mainstream Hollywood's irreversible march towards liberation from strict moral codes.

The three main characters compete for levels of smouldering sexual deviancy rarely seen on the screen. Archie is too old for Baby Doll, probably does not deserve her, and has succumbed to deviant behaviour targeting his own wife. Resorting to arson is unlikely to endear him to anyone, and instead of solving his problems the crime simply hastens his final humiliation. Karl Malden plays Archie full of worry, sweat and pent-up frustration, a man almost tasting the coming satisfaction of a night with Baby Doll, but unaware how far he really is from domestic happiness.

Carroll Baker, in her second major role after Giant, drapes the screen with an irresistible allure. Baby Doll is uneducated but far from dumb, a girl transitioning to adulthood and waking up to her world, but not liking what she sees. Instinctively repulsed by Archie she is immediately attracted to Silva, and the long scene between them generates intense eroticism packaged into eerily twisted behaviour. Baker emits a ferociously destabilizing combination of childlike innocence and sultry sexuality, a woman unleashing her powers before she even begins to understand them.

Eli Wallach makes his film debut and immediately establishes the persona of a shady man oily enough to manipulate others while working towards his own agenda. Silva easily outmanoeuvres Archie and seduces Baby Doll before finding and demonstrating some genuine warmth towards her and reconsidering his end game. The cosmopolitan to Archie's red-neck, and thoughtful while Archie is boorish, when Archie allows the red mist to rush him into the heat of a clumsy act of arson, Silva serves his revenge cold.

Throughout Baby Doll Kazan frequently keeps his principals in close-up, filling the screen with three people heading in different directions, colliding for a few hours as destinies intertwine before they are spun out into unexpected orbits, with nothing necessarily resolved but everything certainly changed.

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Movie Review: The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly (1966)

"You see, in this world there's two kinds of people, my friend: those with loaded guns and those who dig. You dig." Blondie (Clint Eastwood), talking to Tuco (Eli Wallach).

After the success of A Fistful Of Dollars and For A Few Dollars More, Sergio Leone finally gets his hands on the budget of his dreams, and assembles the first western opera to conclude the Dollars trilogy.

Driven by an Ennio Morricone music score featuring the two-note coyote yell that has since become legend, and with every scene a lesson in framing, actor dynamics, and fluid camera motion, The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly is an all-time classic.

It's a sprawling epic about three men chasing after buried gold coins in the midst of the American Civil War. Tuco (Wallach, as the Ugly) is a common bandit with a bounty on his head; Blondie (Eastwood, as the Good, although the term is only relative) is a bounty hunter; and Angeleyes (Lee Van Cleef, as the Bad) is a brutal henchman who is single-mindedly pursuing the buried loot. The three men wage a triangular battle against an unforgiving desert landscape littered with desperate, colourful and disposable secondary characters fully aware they are bit players in a masterpiece of storytelling.

Tuco and Blondie start out as partners but their relationship quickly deteriorates. They are soon engaged in a deadly personal feud when they stumble onto the clues needed to locate the treasure. Angeleyes is mercilessly abusing or mowing down anyone who gets in his way. The three men, after taking turns to brutalize each other, need to make their way to the cemetery where the gold awaits, while guarding against each other in a deadly game of shifting alliances, with the added inconvenience of avoiding the brutality of the Civil War raging around them.

Leone could now afford a third American actor, and Eli Wallach gives the performance of his life as Tuco. While Eastwood and Van Cleef nail their stoic and tough personas, Wallach takes over the heart of the film as the scrambly, shifty bandit scratching out a form of survival. He is also afforded the only back-story in the movie in a sequence where he meets his brother. Tuco's subsequent description of his relationship with his sibling as he rides away with Blondie is the trilogy's most human moment.

The film has two enormous, drawn-out showcase scenes, and both come in the final hour of this 160 minute epic. In the first, Tuco and Blondie stumble upon a stand-off at a bridge between the Union and Confederate armies, and need to resolve the meat-grinding battle hindering their progress . The second showcase occupies the final 30 minutes, and takes place at the cemetery. Here Leone conjures up one of the best scenes in the history of movie-making. As Ennio Morricone unspools the magnificent The Ecstasy of Gold theme, Leone's cameras alternate their focus between Tuco sprinting through the cemetery and the whirling multitudes of headstones. The end-result is spine-tingling, hypnotizing and brilliant, all at once.

Leone follows this with the classic triangular showdown between the three men in the middle of the cemetery, unimaginably stretched in time and filled with trademark tight close-ups. The Good, The Bad And The Ugly is a breath-taking conclusion to a magnificent trilogy, and also one of the best films ever made.

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