This one surprised me a lot. Not only because, unlike “For a Fistful of Dollars” it doesn’t repeat any story I know. But because of its characters. First, I’d say Clint Eastwood isn’t the main hero of that story, it’s Colonel Mortimer. He’s introduced first, has far more agency, and a revenge arc. You can argue that Eastwood’s character goes through a development as well, but not as significant. It’s almost bait’n’switch, I’d say: you came for Eastwood, but stayed for Van Cleef.
The second surprise is how diabolically evil Indio is. The last such unapologetically evil character I can remember was Henry Drax played by Farrel in “North Water”. Indio orders family of the man he betrayed shot, and then challenges him to a duel. Here I thought that after the duel, they’ll be shown alive, as just giving more motivation, but no.
Then Indio is showing shooting another woman’s fiance, then raping her. And I thought there will be some story of how she rejected him because he was Mexican or something, but no. He just decided to burglar into someone’s house.
The movie is long, almost two hours, and not entirely for good reasons. Some of the scenes are too long.
