There's some debate over the greatest Western movie of all time. Titles like High Noon, The Searchers, Unforgiven, and Stagecoach are all solid contenders for the title. Many Western fans, however, would contend that the greatest Western ever wasn't even a Hollywood production, but was made by an Italian crew and a handful of American actors on the desolate plains of Spain. That movie is The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, and right now it won't cost you a fistful of dollars to watch it.
Clint Eastwood, star of TV's Rawhide, had limited success in American movies, and was lured to Europe by director Sergio Leone. He cast him in a Western remake of the Akira Kurosawa samurai epic Yojimbo; the resulting film, A Fistful of Dollars, was unlike anything American audiences had seen before. A loose sequel, For a Few Dollars More, with Eastwood reprising his role as the mysterious Man With No Name, followed three years later; it paired Eastwood with veteran Hollywood heavy Lee Van Cleef. It, too, was a success, and soon, a third film was in the works, with Eastwood and Van Cleef returning along with Leone, screenwriter Luciano Vincenzoni, and composer Ennio Morricone.
As the US Civil War rages, three men are on the hunt for a stash of Confederate gold hidden in the Southwest. They are "The Good," the Man With No Name (Eastwood), an enigmatic drifter; "The Bad," a heartless mercenary known as Angel Eyes (Van Cleef); and "The Ugly," Tuco (Eli Wallach), a luckless Mexican bandit. Over the course of the film, the three will be allies and enemies before they find the gold buried in a lonely grave, leading to one of the most famous standoffs in cinema history. You can catch the whole thing streaming for free on Pluto TV for a limited time only.
A huge financial success upon its release, The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly is regarded as the finest of the so-called "spaghetti Westerns," and proved to be enormously influential. Hollywood's own Westerns soon began to emulate the film's grey morality that blended the line between hero and villain; one director who was strongly influenced by it was Eastwood himself, who would direct his first Western, High Plains Drifter, in 1973.
The Good, The Bad and the Ugly is now streaming for free on Pluto TV. Stay tuned to Collider for future updates.
