For a Few Dollars More

Day 246 - 9/3/09 - Movie #242

BEFORE: Technically, it's "Per Qualche Dollaro in Piu" - in the original Italian, of course.

My pet peeve this week is with cable channels that, for whatever reason, do NOT run sequels back-to-back, which in my mind should be a no-brainer. Why wouldn't you want to lock in a viewer for 4 hours instead of 2? If you've got the rights to "Terminator", for example, spend a few more bucks and lock down the rights to "Terminator 2", for chrissakes. But too often, the rights to a franchise are split among several different channels, creating a scattershot approach to entertaining America. Case in point - the Encore Westerns channel ran "A Fistful of Dollars" a few months ago, but this sequel ran on AMC, a channel I had vowed not to watch, due to the ads and the oversensitive editing. Still, I figured I should grab it and complete the set, who knows when some other channel would run it commercial-free? AMC, why can't you be like other channels and run movies without interruptions, the way nature intended?

THE PLOT: Two bounty hunters with completely different intentions team up to track down a Western outlaw.

AFTER: Eastwood's Drifter With No Name has drifted from San Miguel, Mexico, to El Paso, TX - and is now a bounty hunter. But he's not the only one, and Lee Van Cleef's Col. Douglas Mortimer is his competition in tracking down "El Indio". The villain looked very familiar, and yes, IMDB confirmed that he also played Ramon Rojo in "Fistful of Dollars"...

The production values on this film are much higher, and there's more of a coherent story - I had no trouble staying awake through this one. I liked the structure, with the two bounty hunters teaming up - one working inside the gang and one working outside. Some things are still the same - Drifter can still take out 4 guys by firing his pistol rapidly, before any of his opponents can get off one shot...but Mortimer appears to be the more accurate gunman - shooting the Drifter's hat up in the air, and keeping it aloft with 5 successive shots.

The music's a little better too - we're still one movie away from the most famous Ennio Morricone theme song - but you can sort of get a hint of it here. I would love to see the drifter ride into town and wonder "Where's that whistling coming from?"

RATING: 6 out of 10 stubby cigars