For A Few Dollars More - Movie Review

For A Few Dollars More - This iconic western doesn't disappoint.

For a Few Dollars More is the follow up to A Fistful of Dollars and is the second part of what is known as the dollars trilogy. It was released in 1967 and stars Clint Eastman as the man with no name, but many call him Manco for whatever reason, and Lee Van Clef as Colonel Douglas Mortimer. Both play bounty killers which is awesome.

Let me just disclose my bias on the front end, as far as spaghetti westerns go this one has got to be right up there with the best of them. Iconic characters, iconic music, and iconic shootouts, and not much talking which all equals awesome.

The movie begins with the opening line, “Where life had no value, death sometimes, had a price. That is why the bounty killers appeared.” The movie begins with Mortimer reading his Bible on a train and it’s amazing that he can shoot as good as he can because the way he is reading his Bible, he is darn near kissing thing – but either way, it’s pretty cool.

Mortimer stops the train in a town it was not scheduled to stop at, because that’s where he wanted to stop – It’s Mortimer’s world and everyone else on the train is just living in it. So he gets off the train in all black with his black horse looking cool and sees a picture of a wanted man with a bounty on his head. He then goes and kills the man – boom.

We then see Clint Eastwood walk into a saloon through the classic double saloon doors which is always cool, which is also way every grown man talks every opportunity to walk through doors like that when given the opportunity.

So Clint Eastwood finds the man that he was looking for with a bounty on his head playing cards. He just walks up, takes the cards and starts dealing them with the guy…They go back and forth and lay their cards down and, of course, Clint Eastwood has a better hand – the bad guy says, “you never said what we were playing for.” Clint Eastwood says, “Your life” -which alone, is worth the price of admission.

They, awkwardly get in a fight and Clint Eastwood karate chops him, because it’s the wild west. As the bad guy lays on the ground, Clint Eastwood finds some time to get some whiskey. Three more bad guys bust through the saloon doors, and are like, “let our friend go” Clint Eastwood turns around and shoots them all before they can even draw, and then shoots the other bad guy who was still on the floor that he just beat up. He then collects the bounty for all the guys – best start to a movie ever.

We then meet the Indio in prison, he is a calculated, ruthless, cold-blooded killer, and we later find out tried to kill Mortimer and raped his sister. Then a bunch of generic bad guys break Indio out of prison. Just an aside, one thing I had a hard time getting past was the fact that they cast the same guy, who played the bad guy in Fistful of Dollars to play the bad guy in this movie…the characters are identical they just have different names. Apparently, there was a shortage of Italian guys to play Mexican bad guys at the time.

Anyway, the stage is set. There is a huge bounty placed on Indio’s head which draws Clint

Eastwood and Mortimer into the same town with the world’s safest bank, both believing that Indio is going to try and rob it. It doesn’t take long before Clint Eastwood and Mortimer to learn that they are both bounty killers and after the same man. So a standoff is inevitable, which occurs and is awesome – both men showing their chops by shooting each-others hats.

Both men know the odds are not in their favor with Indio having to many men for either one of them to take out by themselves. They agree to partner up, and have Clint Eastwood infiltrate Indio’s gang as to find out when Indio is going to hit the bank, when he does, then Clint Eastwood and Mortier will lay the smack on all the men and collect the bounty.

However, unexpectedly, Indio and his men blowup the back of the bank and ride off with the safe. Causing Clint Eastwood and Mortimer to pursue the men. Indio still thinks that Clint Eastwood is one of them, while Mortimer is able to get into the gang after a show down in a bar, with Mortimer convincing Indio that he is the only one who can open the safe they just stole.

After opening the safe and seeing the money inside, both Mortimer and Clint Eastwood, try and pull a fast one on Indio and each other by stealing the money at night. Indio catches them and beats up both the men. But them Indio decides to release the bounty killers and frame them for murdering one of his men and then release his other men on the bounty killers…suspecting that they will all kill each other and then he’ll make off with all the money.

However, there is one thing that Indio didn’t take into account and that’s Clint freakin’ Eastwood. Clint Eastwood and Mortimer kill all the men, leading to a standoff between Mortimer and Indio with Mortimer revealing to him who he is. However, when Mortimer shoots another bad guy Indio is able to disarm him…So there’s a standoff, but Mortimer is now unarmed.

Indio does this thing throughout the movie where he plays a tune on his pocket watch and when the tune is over then they draw. Come to find out this was the watch that he stole from Mortimer’s sister. Mortimer having the matching watch that we also see throughout the film. Indio is facing Mortimer, and just as the tune is about to stop, clint Eastwood shows up with the other watch playing the same tune, so the music continues, keeping the standoff going. Also, Clint Eastwood has a gun on Indio so he won’t shoot.

Clint Eastwood walks over to Mortimer and gives him his gun and says, “now we start”…As the music stops, Mortimer shoots Indio, and walks over and takes his sister’s watch back. He then tells Clint Eastwood he can have all bounty money. Mortimer rides off into the sun set – which looks awesome and Clint Eastwood rides off with a wagon full of bodies, and also all the money from that was in the safe that they try to steal earlier. The end, roll credits with awesome music playing – Boom.

Man Test

I don’t even need to ask whether or not this movie passes the man test. It is obviously a dude movie and to ask the question is stupid.

Christian Worldview

But what about Christian worldview. Is there anything of value that Christians can pull from this movie? Most would be tempted on the surface to say no, this movie is about men who kill for money. And despite how cool and iconic these characters maybe – that is not cool.

However, I think we need to remember the setting and the opening line, “Where life had no value, death sometimes, had a price. That is why the bounty killers appeared.” The bad guys had bounties placed on their lives by the law. These were all criminals that had committed terrible crimes and were wanted either dead or alive and whosoever could bring them in, one way or another was rewarded for that. The idea is that justice is just that important. Those who are actual victims deserve that much, and without that, these criminals are like a rotten tooth that will ruin everything around them.

Some may protest this, saying this is just vigilante justice, perhaps, but it’s still justice, which I think prefer over the our style of sanitized justice which isn’t really justice, but were told it is repeatedly. Christian’s are a people who live in the cross hairs of this tension between finding the proper balance justice and mercy.

We long for justice and yet, we know that we all naturally deserve God wrath for breaking His holy law. On the Cross of Christ, we see both justice and mercy perfectly. We see the

vindication of the Father’s holiness through the judgment of sin – the righteous dying in the place of the unrighteous – Christ taking our sin upon Himself. But also, mercy and grace in that all who repent and believe that Jesus died in their place and that it what they deserved, they receive God’s mercy and grace in that Christ was punished in their place. Christ was clothed in our sin so that we could be clothed in His righteousness.

Because Christians are a people who have not received what we deserve in Christ, we can get all squishy when it comes to justice, but we should not. Laws are put into (by God’s grace, they should reflect His) and they must be enforced for the flourishing of society.

This is why God appointed the magistrate – to execute His law and to punish the evil doers. The victim is the only one in the equation that can justifiably and rightly extend grace, which they can freely do, however that is not the role of the law, nor of the magistrate…which is simply to execute the law.

Both Mortimer and Clint Eastwood were acting on behalf of the law tracking down bad men who had gotten away. True they were dangerous men in a dangerous world, but they had this side of themselves under voluntary control as opposed to the evil men given only to impulse and were just dangerous. Both Mortimer and Clint Eastwood were killers, but they only killed men with a death sentence over their heads already because of crimes they committed. We may blush at that, but I bet their victims didn’t.

Unfortunately, in trying so hard to sanitize our world, we’ve just dressed up the devil in makeup and legalese with a perverted legal system that we call justice. At least in the world of, For a Few Dollars More the bad guys are obvious and don’t wear suits while hiding behind the law and calling it justice…I think I prefer the former over the later.

Overall, I give this movie an A.

A