For a Few Dollars More (1965)

 Sergio Leone's "For a Few Dollars More"


After the success of the wildly popular "A Fistful of Dollars," Sergio Leone and his team rushed to complete its follow up a year later with "For a Few Dollars More." This would be the second film in a trilogy that many call "The Dollars Trilogy," with "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly" being the third and final installment. "For a Few Dollars More" continued to employ Leone's unique style of the post-modern Western and become the highest grossing film in Italy in 1967, proving to be far more successful that its predecessor. 

The premise of the film is rather simple: two bounty hunters team up to go after a crazed and dangerous banker robber who plans on robbing the El Paso bank, the largest bank in the country. 

I had a hard time connecting to this film the way I connected to "A Fistful of Dollars." Perhaps that is because I was running sick with a cold and wasn't in the best mood. However, I do see objectively how the film stands above its previous installment. There is a far greater story at play and far greater stakes. Because I am still sick and not feeling well, this review of the film will be short. I will end by simply saying, it was an entertaining venture, but it was not a film that I will be thinking about going forward. That being said, with retrospect, I do recognize and view "For a Few Dollars More" as a step up from "A Fistful of Dollars" and takes its predecessor to greater heights.


Side note - One interesting thing I noted about the film is how it subverts the typical trope of the Western. While the Western is interested in the anxiety brought about by progress and change coming to the wild open of the western plain, "For a Few Dollars More" looks at these anxieties from the other 'side of the fence' - so to speak. There is a scene in which one of the characters is complaining that a banker came and offered him a large sum to move so he could construct a railroad. The man refused and now the railroad is comedically and dangerously close to his home. But, I see the two bounty hunters as instruments of the oncoming 'progress' as they chase down the very robbers coming to take away these banker's finances. The two bounty hunters act as the law and order coming in to secure this oncoming wealth and abundance that has arrived to take advantage of the land and its people. It's a very strange vantage point and leans in a far different direction than the typical Western. Leone continues to subvert the Western tropes in strange and interesting ways.




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