Fistful of Dollars

The first of the truly great Italian Westerns, the west's first blatant anti-hero, if he can be called that. Clint Eastwood's character, credited as 'The Man with No Name', created an archetype of the new gunslinger, one who doesn't care about the law, love, or politics, the one who does what he wants, be it moral or not so much.

An artistic interpretation of Yojimbo, set in Spain that's pretending to be Southern California.

Kurasawa's compensation for the western redoing of Yojimbo, was that Akira Kurosawa and Ryuzo Kikushima received 15% of the film's worldwide gross and exclusive distribution rights for Japan, Taiwan and South Korea. Kurosawa said later he made more money from this project than he did on Yojimbo.

The use of close camera cuts to faces put an almost uncomfortable intimacy to the film, making the audience be that close to the violence and bloodshed and greed.

The casting of television cowboy darling Clint Eastwood to play this gruff and rugged en'poncho'ed near villain turned out beautifully. The official Rawhide gun and holster, along with authentic Californian jeans and bitter cigars gave a truly 'American West' feel to the Italian masterpiece.

This film did a lot for cinema, giving another decade to the dying silver screen cowboy, recreating him to be more like his audience, seeing both sides of a story, being a spectrum of grays rather then a strait cut black and white.