Also known as Per un pugno di dollari.
As far as remakes go, this one is hard to beat. Taking Akira Kurosawa's classic Yojimbo and reimagining it as a western works better for this story than one would expect; the desolate desert countryside, the bandit gangs' pistols replacing samurai swordsmen, it all fits together extremely well. Just like Yojimbo, a man rides into an isolated town in the middle of a war between two gangs. Deciding something needs doing, he sets out destroy both, whether the townspeople want it or not. The resulting clever manipulation and chaos is solid entertainment. Clint Eastwood is in his early prime here, squinting his way through one tough situation after another and giving his grumpy gunfighter a great sense of humor and stubbornness. Meanwhile all of the points that its predecessor got right are mimicked here to great effect, and often perfectly expanded upon. While it's easy to label this movie a plagiarized remake of an earlier great film, that doesn't mean it can't succeed on its own.
8 out of 10.
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