A buzzing fly, a train whistle, the wind blowing through the desert. Then a flurry of action, a flash of silver and - BANG! - an early grave for a fistful of worthless varmints who didn't fill their hands fast enough. Brilliant. And that's just the opening 13 minutes...
Henry Fonda plays the psychotic gunslinger hired by a railroad to scare beautiful Claudia Cardinale off her land, while the late Charles Bronson is the harmonica-tooting stranger giving him a run for his money with the help of Jason Robards' no-good outlaw. Brutal, bloody and poetic, this is, without hyperbole, one of the greatest Westerns ever made.
DVD Extras:
'"Here we see the checked-gingham motif associated with pioneer woman'," drones an academic on the group commentary track. Fortunately, the other yakkers - - including directors John Carpenter and Alex Cox and co-scripter Bernardo Bertolucci - - manage to strike a lighter note, but you can't help wishing Leone himself were still around to do this justice. And while the three wide-ranging docs effectively chart the film's history, the absence of the reams of deleted scenes referred to by various interviewees is savagely disappointing. Seems this epic is still waiting for a suitably epic DVD.
