I said it in the other thread where a the person asked me to post only the top 20 of my letterboxd ranked spag list in this thread here… GBU is nr 21… and im gonna get some flack for it.
But i find it somewhat sluggishly paced and Blondie and Angel Eyes such uninteresting characters.
Colonel Mortimer is one of my favorite characters. But i find Angel Eyes such a downgrade from the proto Sartana that was Mortimer.
Other as Tuco, Tuco’s revolver assembley scene and the meta thought that lies behind the part where tuco and blondie are pretending to be soldiers. There is not much for me here. Also not Morricone’s best soundtrack… people recognize it for sure, but i find it hard pressed to call it my favorite.
I just recently rewatched all 5 Sartana films, and for me its the other way round, with Have a Good Funeral the best, and Angel of Death the weakest of the ones with Garko. But the differences are not that big and I enjoyed them all.
The grand duel is my favorite on that list. Of course excluding the heavy weights like once upon a time in the west, and the good the bad and the ugly .
I will never understand why so many people rank “the big gundown” so high up on their list. It’s quite weak IMO, the story is weak, the action is weak, it’s poorly paced, and it’s carried by Lee Van Cleef’s acting which is the only remarkable aspect of the whole movie. I would be very interested to hear why you, and others, like that movie so much.
For me personally it just has that certain SW je ne sais quoi … the atmosphere to these films is the key … there’s a mood of uncertainty as to who’s who and what’s what, which was almost never the case with American western films. It’s all the more enjoyable for the fact that we can’t figure out what’s going happen in the first few minutes, which is the case with most John Wayne or Randolph Scott style productions … Hero kills the baddie, and gets the girl
Look at the end shoot out and you’ll thank me later. Then what you call slow paced is irrelevant in the judgment of the movie. The manner in which the movie is played matters most.
Are you sure you have watched the un-cut version and not the monstrosity that was released in the U.S.? If you watched the U.S. release, that would explain many of your complaints about the film.
Yes, but those aspects are also part of most spaghetti western films which arguably do those things way better. “The Grand Duel”, for example, does those aspects way better imho.
Tastes will always be individual and different, even within a group in the same niche. “The Grand Duel” never clicked with me, for example. I prefer TBG by a lot over TGD in just about every category, even though TBG imho is far from perfect, even in the much better longer version.
I also think that TBG is kinda overrated by SW fans, I also see there a big pacing problem in the film middle, but overrated is relative, and it is otherwise a fine film and still one of the 30 best Spags for me. While The Grand Duel would barely make my top 100.
But tastes can differ considerably of course, so why don’t you post your top 20 here? I’m curious …
I haven’t posted my top 20 because I don’t feel like I’ve seen enough yet. I’ve seen more than 20, but not enough. For example, I still haven’t managed to get my hands on “run man run”, “Django kill… if you live shoot!” and the Sartana movies. These movies aren’t exactly easy to obtain.
Ahh, ok, then good luck with finding those you search soon.
Btw, I also think that the uncut version may change your opinion.
My first version run only about 85 min, and I gave it only 5/10. Later I raised it after a re-watch to 6/10, but it was the uncut version which really made me enjoy the film. Same for Run Man Run.
I post them here, cause if somebody knows one of them, and thinks he (or she) is or was very knowledgeable about the genre, then I would keep their lists for now, and erase instead another one.
I will keep for example the list of Shobary, even if it is pretty unlikely that he will ever come back and change it.
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