The best or worst thing to say about "A Fistful of Dollars" is that it exemplifies the genre of "Spaghetti Westerns." Directed by Sergio Leone with music by Ennio Morricone, the movie is a remake of Akira Kurosawa's "Yojimbo." (so much so that kurosawa sued them!)
The plot, after all, is pretty much the same. A stranger arrives in a town ruled by two competing gangs. Using his wits, the stranger pits the two gangs against each other until they are wiped out all while the stranger makes a few bucks in the progress.
If I'm not mistaken, this was the movie that put Clint Eastwood on the map, so to speak. All Eastwood had to done was look mean, squint a lot, and shoot a lot of bad guys. Eastwood would much of the same in many of his later films before becoming a very successful director of very different films like "Bridges of Madison County," and "Million Dollar Baby."
The movie itself is filled many great examples of the genre, but unfortunately, most of them are now considered cliched. The pacing is a bit slow and the 100 minutes movie feels like a full two hours. The bad guys are really bad, but our (anti-)hero wins in the end, just like any good Western should.
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