Il buono, il brutto, il cattivo: The conclusion of Sergio Leone’s “Dollar” trilogy with Clint Eastwood is considered a Western classic.
Plot and background
“Two Glorious Scoundrels” is the conclusion of director Sergio Leone’s so-called “Dollar Trilogy”, which began with “For a Fistful of Dollars” in 1964. The almost three-hour-long Italo-Western is considered a classic and milestone of its genre. As in its two predecessors, Clint Eastwood once again plays a leading role, with Lee Van Cleef and Eli Wallach acting alongside him.
The international title of “Two Glorious Scoundrels”, “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly” , already indicates that the film tells the story of three characters who clash in the search for a treasure of gold.
The Good Guy (Clint Eastwood) is a taciturn gunslinger working with the Ugly Guy (Eli Wallach). The latter is a wanted bandit and so his partner repeatedly turns him in to the authorities, collects the reward and then saves his partner from death by hanging with a precise shot from a distance. The third in the group is the evil bounty hunter Sentenza (Lee Van Cleef), who gets wind of the machinations of the two and one day crosses their paths.
Sentenza is on the hunt for the wanted soldier Bill Carson (Antonio Casale), who has embezzled the money of a regimental treasury. The good guy and the ugly guy find the badly injured man, give him a drink and learn where the treasure is to be found. It is buried in a cemetery and soon the three men are irreconcilably opposed in the all-important duel. Greed for the gold coins finally transforms even the so-called good guy into an ice-cold and calculating loner.
