A Fistful of Dollars

            Based on Akira Kurosawa’s Yojimbo, A Fistful of Dollars also marks the first collaboration between Clint Eastwood and Italian director Sergio Leone, who will forever be associated with spaghetti westerns after this film and the others which followed. These include For a Few Dollars More, The Good the Bad and the Ugly, and the lesser known Duck, You Sucker. These films are all fantastic, but few are more enjoyable than A Fistful of Dollars. It is a violent western about a man who enters a town and plays his abilities with a gun between two rivaling gangs.

            Eastwood created a poncho-wearing character to be known as “The Man With No Name,” a skilled gunfighter who makes a living in a variety of ways. In A Fistful of Dollars he enters a border town and finds it over-run by competing smugglers, and sets out to make money off of each. Eventually he grows sentimental about the poor villagers being terrorized by the feud, and sets out to end the battle once and for all.

            The high definition presentation of this spectacular western action film makes all of the difference. There are tons of special features, but all of these have been taken from a previous DVD release, and although it is nice to have them compactly on one disc, it is the high definition of the Blu-ray which makes this film worth owning in the best possible quality. The sound and picture is pristine, making this Blu-ray disc the best quality available.