For a Few Dollars More

"The leading icon of a generation" (Roger Ebert), Academy AwardÂ(r) winner* Clint Eastwood continues his trademark role as the legendary "Man With No Name" in this second installment of the famous Sergio Leone trilogy. Scripted by Luciano Vincenzoni and featuring Ennio Morricone's haunting musical score, For A Few Dollars More is a modern classicone of the greatest Westerns evermade. Eastwood is a keen-eyed, quick-witted bounty hunter on the bloody trail of Indio, the territory's most treacherous bandit. But his ruthless rival, Colonel Mortimer (Lee Van Cleef, High Noon), is determined to bring Indio in first...dead or alive! Failing to capture their preyor eliminate each otherthe two are left with only one option: team up, or face certain death atthe hands of Indio and his band of murderous outlaws.

A ringing instance of a sequel far outstripping its predecessor, Sergio Leone's For a Few Dollars More takes the lethal antihero from A Fistful of Dollars, gives him both a rival and an adversary worthy of sharing a gun-blazing corrida, and ratchets up the stylization to something approaching grandeur. This time the Man with No Name (Clint Eastwood) is a bounty hunter whose desert Southwest killing ground is suddenly crowded by the presence of an older, black-clad shootist (Lee Van Cleef). Individually and together, they terminate sundry grotesques while closing in on their biggest quarry, a memorably insane bandit called El Indio (Gian Maria Volonté is brilliant). There's just enough plot to imbue Van Cleef with genuine mystery, a dark avenging angel from a lost past whose pull would supply the emotional core of Leone's later masterworks Once upon a Time in the West and Once upon a Time in America. Leone's bravura widescreen compositions are breathtaking, and Ennio Morricone's music score--tinged with lunatic religiosity--is his first great one. --Richard T. Jameson