Mexican Standoff - The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

We find our characters in a long-developed struggle to locate $200,000 worth of gold coins. Tuco (“The Ugly” member of the trio) finally stumbles upon Sad Hill Cemetery, while the man with no name, or Blondie as Tuco likes to call him, is only a cannonball’s flight distance behind. This gives Tuco the immediate opportunity to run circles and zig-zags through the gravestones as fast as his greasy little legs can manage. He is looking for the grave marked “Arch Stanton”, which remained a mystery until just a few moments ago when Blondie and Tuco each revealed their half of the secret as to where the gold could be located, and coincidentally the wooden grave marker has a death date on it of February 3, 1862, exactly 153 years to the date before this article was posted. This entire movie would not be possible without the musical talents of Ennio Morricone, who has definitively marked in particular this scene and the epic showdown with his genius. “The Ecstasy of Gold” is part of this classic movie’s score, and has even been covered during live performances of Metallica (usually the opening number). When the song concludes, at last, Tuco finds what he is looking for and frantically begins to dig for the money inside the coffin. Just about the time our blonde hero “The Good” shows up to bring him a shovel, they are held at gunpoint by Angel Eyes, our nemesis gunfighter introduced in the movie as “The Bad”, and he proceeds to throw another shovel into the mix, instructing them both to dig. Much to the dismay of Lee Van Cleef (The Bad), Clint Eastwood’s character refuses to dig because he knows that inside the grave marked “Arch Stanton” lies nothing but a dusty pile of old bones. There is only one way to get to that money, and that’s to “earn it”. Blondie decides to write the name of the grave on the bottom of a stone and then he sets it out in the center of the circle that lies in the middle of the cemetery. This begins what is probably the most famous scene ever in western film. The “Mexican Standoff” is extremely tense and emotional, with very little movement, absolutely no dialogue and another brilliant song by Morricone called “The Trio” that enhances the entire scene, and is quite obviously the climax of the film. With all sorts of camera angles, tight shots, close-ups, wide views, blurred backgrounds and such intense energy, the director Sergio Leone really brings it home with the increasingly rapid movement of the shots coinciding phenomenally with the rising music. “Bang!” As Angel Eyes draws his weapon, Blondie is all too quick, puts a bullet in him with the swiftness of a lightning strike, and before he can muster up a shot from the ground, Angel Eyes is fatally shot and winds up in a shallow grave that was already conveniently dug. The Good even has enough courtesy to fire one shot into his hat and another into his pistol, shooting them into the grave along with him. Eli Wallach’s character Tuco can’t even fire his gun when he wants to and soon learns that Eastwood’s character had unloaded it the night before. Blondie states that in this world there are two kinds of people, those with loaded guns, and those who dig. He also reveals the actual location of the money is in the grave marked “UNKNOWN” next to Arch Stanton’s, and also that the stone has no name written on it either, so Wallach’s  character is much obliged to begin unearthing the loads of currency. He jumps in once he opens the buried box and lugs out eight heavy bags of gold tied together in twos. With only a couple of blows to one of the bags with the side of a shovel, he bursts it open scattering the shiny metal pieces into the sand and joyfully relishes in the fact that there really is all that money and that all the effort has finally paid off. “It’s all ours Blondie!” he exclaims, but as he stands up, much to his chagrin, hanging from a tree is a rope tied into a noose. Come to find out, Blondie is not joking around. He forces Tuco at gunpoint to stand on a wooden cross used as a headstone and put his head inside the lariat. Blondie then ties Tuco’s hands behind his back, loads his half of the gold on the rear of his black stallion, hops on his steed, and apologizes, leaving Tuco back there cursing in the wind. He rides off with Tuco facing death once again, and just when things seem pretty bleak for our friend “The Ugly”, Blondie comes back into the picture and takes aim with his rifle, shooting the tethered rope, “just like old times”. Tuco falls from the gallows tree and as his head lands on one of the bags of money, a freeze shot names each character in sequence, “the ugly, the bad, and the good.” The main title theme song “Il Buono, Il Brutto, Il, Cattivo" (The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly) begins to carry us out and we see Tuco struggle to stand himself up off the ground. As Blondie rides into the distance, Tuco manages to scream out one last obscenity, “Hey, Blonde!!! You know what you are??? Just a dirty son of a…” He is cut off by the famous shrieks of Morricone’s music and we see Clint Eastwood gallop away on his horse across the grassy planes of what is supposed to be the Midwest of the United States, but was actually filmed in Spain. This long, continuous shot concludes the staple film found in any reputable western collection. It is the third and most popularized in a series of Leone’s Spaghetti Westerns about the man with no name, and this motion picture from 1966 is definitive as a must-see for anyone who appreciates watching an incredible film. You know, they just don’t make ‘em like they used to anymore.