In the sad little world of critical reviews, both professional and written by jobless house-husbands, the words "MASTERPIECE" and "CLASSIC" are always used to mask any disappointments a film may have. When you go to a fine restaurant and spend half your paycheck on a piece of meat, you unconsciously force yourself into denial that that piece of meat is the best you've ever eaten. Even if you would have been more content with McDonald's. Why? Because you just spent half your paycheck on it, and some French guy somewhere says it's fine meat, thus you have to agree. You HAVE to. You're unwilling to admit your disappointment. You tell yourself that your taste buds just aren't evolved enough, even though that is just stupid. It works the same way with movies. Once you've seen 500 pages of perfect reviews, read that the film received 100% rating from professional critics, admitting to yourself that you weren't content with the film isn't easy. It's even harder to admit it to other people. It's nearly impossible to write a review stating it. This opening paragraph can apply to thousands of movies. But this is how I felt about The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. It wasn't bad, but it lacked the full contentment I expected.
Emphasis on story/plot has died out over the years. In 2009, top critics put only slightly more emphasis on it as they put on the color of the main character's shirt. Perhaps this is why we see movies, forget about them, go see another one just like the last one, forget about it: repeat the same hollow cycle until we die. Aristotle put story at the center of all fictional work; modern critics put cinematography and acting at the center. Whether you side with an ancient dead guy or bitter middle-aged men devoid of sex lives, it's hard to deny that the latter mindset just leads to pretty moving pictures and eventually is completely forgettable. That is the main flaw I had with The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.
While this film has purely awesome moving pictures (more on that later), the plot is weak. In fact, it's so weak and so predictable that I found that I could quickly care less about anything happening. For the film's credit, I will say that the predictable linier plot did have some quirky variation, and added scenes that you wouldn't normally expect in a Western. However, the fact that the driving force of this epic film is nothing but a cliché treasure hunt is the reason I found it so lacking. Couldn't the writers have been a little more creative? If they had been, this would have been an absolute perfect film. If they had been, there would be nothing for me to criticize. Even those who already find this a perfect film, can you really deny that a little more creativity would have made it even more perfect? Furthermore, the Civil War scenes pumped an even more annoying vibe into The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly because they were just copy/pasted from generic war films. They added nothing but another layer of seen-this-thousand-times to a generic plot that was already getting annoying because I've seen it a thousand times. And none of this criticism is from a modern standpoint. Everything I just criticized was unoriginal in its time.
What was good was the ugly. You've read this part in hundreds of other reviews, so I'm not going to take much time here. The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly perfected true grit like never before. That's where the credit lies. From rugged faces to rugged deserts to rugged clothing to rugged buildings to rugged camera style, nothing was left of the sanitized world we live in. Some people criticize the realism of this and the realism of other aspects of the film, to which I say: I just don't care. The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly can be taken as a mature fantasy set in a overdone western worldwhat's wrong with that? People also criticize the film by saying it's not as good as its prequels, which is a matter of taste. However, it isn't a matter of taste that the prequels didn't even come close to the epic scope or raw grit of this film. They didn't have the brutal nihilism of the characters. They were more polished, with tight conventional plotting and less overt backdrops.
Another incorrect criticism of The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly is that it is nothing but a macho, quirky, masculinity-fest with no bearing on the realistic world. Those people make me laugh. The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly pretty much singlehandedly brought the nameless antihero into cinema. While this character really gets annoying in modern films, he works here because he was one of the first, as well as one of the best. While I will agree that he has little bearing on real life, it's the secondary characters that break the cliché. The title of the film as well as the film itself both illustrate the opposite that the typical period western would illustrate: the world is not black-and-white. Good doesn't always win. People can stand on both sides of the moral line. Good guys can do immoral things. It's here that the true underline genius comes out, because this is something even modern filmmakers don't understand.
Overall, there is nothing I can say to shake people from the belief that The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly is the best film ever made. Be it due to nostalgia, or be it due to a level of depth I missed, I can't change that. I'm not trying to. But I just want to say that The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly is typical in some aspects. In others, it's legend. I just refuse to give it a perfect score because it's a supposed "CLASSIC".
6/10
Emphasis on story/plot has died out over the years. In 2009, top critics put only slightly more emphasis on it as they put on the color of the main character's shirt. Perhaps this is why we see movies, forget about them, go see another one just like the last one, forget about it: repeat the same hollow cycle until we die. Aristotle put story at the center of all fictional work; modern critics put cinematography and acting at the center. Whether you side with an ancient dead guy or bitter middle-aged men devoid of sex lives, it's hard to deny that the latter mindset just leads to pretty moving pictures and eventually is completely forgettable. That is the main flaw I had with The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.
While this film has purely awesome moving pictures (more on that later), the plot is weak. In fact, it's so weak and so predictable that I found that I could quickly care less about anything happening. For the film's credit, I will say that the predictable linier plot did have some quirky variation, and added scenes that you wouldn't normally expect in a Western. However, the fact that the driving force of this epic film is nothing but a cliché treasure hunt is the reason I found it so lacking. Couldn't the writers have been a little more creative? If they had been, this would have been an absolute perfect film. If they had been, there would be nothing for me to criticize. Even those who already find this a perfect film, can you really deny that a little more creativity would have made it even more perfect? Furthermore, the Civil War scenes pumped an even more annoying vibe into The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly because they were just copy/pasted from generic war films. They added nothing but another layer of seen-this-thousand-times to a generic plot that was already getting annoying because I've seen it a thousand times. And none of this criticism is from a modern standpoint. Everything I just criticized was unoriginal in its time.
What was good was the ugly. You've read this part in hundreds of other reviews, so I'm not going to take much time here. The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly perfected true grit like never before. That's where the credit lies. From rugged faces to rugged deserts to rugged clothing to rugged buildings to rugged camera style, nothing was left of the sanitized world we live in. Some people criticize the realism of this and the realism of other aspects of the film, to which I say: I just don't care. The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly can be taken as a mature fantasy set in a overdone western worldwhat's wrong with that? People also criticize the film by saying it's not as good as its prequels, which is a matter of taste. However, it isn't a matter of taste that the prequels didn't even come close to the epic scope or raw grit of this film. They didn't have the brutal nihilism of the characters. They were more polished, with tight conventional plotting and less overt backdrops.
Another incorrect criticism of The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly is that it is nothing but a macho, quirky, masculinity-fest with no bearing on the realistic world. Those people make me laugh. The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly pretty much singlehandedly brought the nameless antihero into cinema. While this character really gets annoying in modern films, he works here because he was one of the first, as well as one of the best. While I will agree that he has little bearing on real life, it's the secondary characters that break the cliché. The title of the film as well as the film itself both illustrate the opposite that the typical period western would illustrate: the world is not black-and-white. Good doesn't always win. People can stand on both sides of the moral line. Good guys can do immoral things. It's here that the true underline genius comes out, because this is something even modern filmmakers don't understand.
Overall, there is nothing I can say to shake people from the belief that The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly is the best film ever made. Be it due to nostalgia, or be it due to a level of depth I missed, I can't change that. I'm not trying to. But I just want to say that The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly is typical in some aspects. In others, it's legend. I just refuse to give it a perfect score because it's a supposed "CLASSIC".
6/10