"Two hundred thousand dollars is a lot of money. We're gonna have to earn it."
— Blondie
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (Italian: Il buono, il brutto, il cattivo, literally "The Good One, the Ugly One, the Bad One"), released in 1966, is one of the Dollars Trilogy of Spaghetti Westerns that served as a Deconstructor Fleet to the entire Western genre. It is the last, and probably the most famous of the trilogy, and is credited with helping to kill the Western genre and inventing a bevy of new tropes (even popularizing the Mexican Standoff). It's had an incredible impact on nearly all films since then, and is generally regarded as one of the best films ever created.During the American Civil War, the bounty hunter "Blondie" (Clint Eastwood) and the bandit Tuco (Eli Wallach) are running a con game until the former decides to terminate their partnership and take the money. Tuco sets out for revenge. A mercenary, Angel Eyes (Lee Van Cleef), finds out about a stolen cache of Confederate gold, and learns the name of the man who knows where it's hidden. Tuco and Blondie stumble upon this knowledge and the three gunslingers engage in a battle of betrayal across the war-torn landscape.Directed by Sergio Leone and with a soundtrack composed by Ennio Morricone in one of his most memorable works.Somewhat ironically — given that the "Dollars" trilogy started with an unauthorized knockoff of Yojimbo — The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly now has a Foreign Remake in The Good The Bad The Weird (which is Korean and moves the setting to Japanese-controlled Manchuria in the 1930s).
Arc Words: "There are two kinds of people in this world, my friend..." Alternately said by Tuco and Blondie, and always with a different ending.
Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: Tuco is charged with (among other things) murder, rape, bigamy, and playing with marked cards and loaded dice. It's possible that Tuco confessed to a number of crimes he didn't commit in order to raise his bounty. Among other charges, he has apparently robbed from both sides of the civil war.
Ballistic Discount: Tuco. Subverted in that he doesn't actually shoot the store owner.
Bandito: Tuco Benedicto Pacifico Juan Maria Ramirez
Bathroom Breakout: Used by Tuco to jump from the train, handcuffed to the guard.
Beauty Equals Goodness: The most handsome man just happens to be "The Good". Granted, the other two were morally worse than him, but Blondie's not exactly a nice guy.
Beware the Quiet Ones: Blondie is every bit as violent and ruthless as Tuco and Angel Eyes, but he's much less flamboyant. He barely ever talks above a whisper, and he frequently confronts life-threatening situations without uttering a single word. Even when he's crawling through the desert, half-dead from sunburns and dehydration, he never once begs Tuco for his life.
Beware the Silly Ones: Tuco may be a Laughably Evil goof, but he is every bit as dangerous as the other two. Maybe even moreso. Blondie is Genre Savvy enough to unload Tuco's gun before the Mexican Standoff so he doesn't have to face him in a gunfight.
Black and Gray Morality: The inevitable result of deconstructing the typical morality present in most Westerns.
The film starts and ends with Blondie saving Tuco from the noose. Of course, the "save" in the last part is debatable.
Also, the beginning and the end have the three main characters being labeled by onscreen text as "The Ugly", "The Bad", "and The Good," both times in that order.
Butt Monkey: Tuco. He can't catch a break the entire movie. Even at the end when Blondie leaves him half of the gold, but his hands are bound and he has no horse to get back to civilization.
Chekhov's Gunman: Subverted. One of the bounty hunters Tuco shot in his establishing moment loses his arm, spends his time off-screen learning how to shoot with his off hand and comes after Tuco for revenge. He is anticlimactically killed by Tuco while ranting about how much he is going to enjoy his revenge.
Crossing the Desert: Blondie enforces a "walk through" on Tuco as he lefts him stranded in the middle of a desert and far from the nearest town. Reversed later with added Ironic Echo.
Determinator: Not even a war can stop these men from going on a treasure hunt.
Deus ex Machina: Blondie narrowly escapes death thanks to a cannon ball. Note that The Man With No Name hints at cannon fire during his conversation with Tuco as he slips the noose around his neck.
Distracted From Death: Bill Carson finally dies of thirst and exposure in the minute it takes Tuco to run to his horse and grab a canteen. In a subversion, while Tuco is distracted Blondie does come over and hears Carson say where he buried the gold.
Dressing as the Enemy: Subverted, Tuco and Blondie put on a Confederate uniform but it backfires when they encounter a soldier column. The column is initially identified as Confederate but it turns out they are from the Union army; the dust covering their attire made it look the opposite.
Tuco: God's on our side because he hates the yanks too! Blondie: God's not on our side because he hates idiots also.
Exact Words: Utilized by Blondie in the movie's climax. All three main characters have reached Sad Hill cemetery, and they know that the treasure is buried in one of the graves...but only Blondie knows which one. With a standoff appearing inevitable, Blondie places a flat stone on the ground and promises the other men that they'll find the name on the grave on the underside of the stone, and that whoever survives the standoff can have it. The stone is blank, because there is no name on the grave. Blondie only knew where to look because Carson told him which grave the treasure was buried next to.
Eye Scream: Wallace gets Tuco to talk by pushing on his eyes.
Fake Nationality: Eli Wallach, a Polish-American Jew, plays the the Mexican Tuco. Eli Wallach also portrayed a Mexican in his second most memorable role, as the bandit Calvera in The Magnificent Seven.
Fluffy the Terrible: The names "Blondie" and "Angel Eyes" aren't exactly threatening. They are less funny in Italian. "Biondo" is a neutral word, like "blond one". "Angel Eyes" is called Sentenza, which means judgement, or verdict. His English name is supposed to echo this, meaning "Judgement in the eyes of God", but it comes off sounding more like he's just a handsome guy with dreamy eyes.
Freudian Trio: Blondie's the Ego, Tuco the Id, and Angel Eyes the Superego.
Genre Savvy: Tuco. "When you have to shoot, shoot, don't talk." sums it up pretty well.
Good Is Not Nice: Blondie, "The Good," is a scoundrel like the others. In fact, he's less sympathetic than Tuco, since he's the first one to betray their partnership.
Greed: The motivating factor of all three protagonists, but especially Angel Eyes.
Gold Fever: A driving force for the plot. Tuco enters a frenzy state when he finds the place where the gold is: "Ecstasy of Gold"
The Gunslinger: Rather obviously, all of the main characters.
Hair Color Dissonance: Blondie's hair is sandy brown. This is due to imperfect translation from the original Italian.
Hired Guns: Angel Eyes is best described as a mercenary.
His Name Is...: Lampshaded and subverted when Tuco tries and fails to extract information from the dying soldier, only to find Blondie has succeeded in doing so.
Hollywood Density: Averted. It's not a plot point, but look how heavy those bags of gold apparently are.
Iconic Outfit: Blondie's poncho has become his trademark outfit, even though he doesn't wear it until the last 20 minutes of the 3-hour-long movie. It's memetic because he also wore it in the first film of the trilogy, A Fistful Of Dollars.
I'll Kill You!: Tuco, after Blondie dissolves their (first) partnership and leaves him in the desert.
Blondie:Tsk, tsk. Such ingratitude, after all the times I've saved your life.
Improbable Aiming Skills: Each main character demonstrates this, but Blondie really takes the cake for the ability to shoot a rope perfectly on three separate occasions.
Angel Eyes' Establishing Character Moment is killing Stevens and his son after the interrogation about a missing man named Jackson. He also kills Baker, his own boss, after reporting that incident to him, because he cares about working by himself.
Blondie and Tuco do this to each other, in a similar fashion. The only difference is, Tuco stays right by Blondie's side as he treks through a long and dangerous stretch of desert.
One should note that this has nothing to do with a wish to keep Blondie alive. Rather, Tuco wants to torment his ex-partner and taunt him.
Lack of Empathy: All three of them are empathy-impaired, but the near soulless Angel Eyes is the worst.
Leave the Camera Running: Some scenes run long. Doesn't hurt the movie, instead adds to the epic feel of it.
Leitmotif: The main theme is turned into one for each protagonist (The Good's has a whistle, The Bad's an ocarina, and The Ugly's screamed — "AAAAAAAAH!").
The Man They Couldn't Hang: Tuco, subverted with his new partner, by Blondie. And again literally left hanged at the ending... except Blondie comes back to shoot the rope from a very long distance, just for old times' sake.
Tuco's torture scene at the Union prison camp. Immediately preceded by a nice dinner.
Later on in the film, Tuco delivers a shorter but arguably more brutal one to his torturer by throwing him from a moving train and repeatedly slamming his head against a rock until he dies.
"Blondie", the eponymous Good, is a nickname, used only by Tuco; his real name is never mentioned, and the character is known as the Man With No Name in popular culture.
Also, "Angel Eyes", the eponymous Bad. The latter is also referred to as Sentenza, which isn't his true name either.
Displayed by Baker, the old man who paid Angel Eyes to get information on the gold stash at the beginning of the film, when he finds out Angel Eyes wasn't joking about coming to kill him.
Tuco, when he realizes that the soldiers whom he has mistaken for Confederates are actually Unions in disguise with coatings of gray dust on their uniforms.
Tuco's reaction upon noticing the hangman's noose that Blondie has set up for him just after he has dug up the gold, and then again when Blondie shows up to attempt a long-distance cutting of the same rope with a bullet and Tuco thinks he's going to get shot instead of the rope around his neck.
Blondie gets two; petting a kitten, and comforting a dying soldier.
Tuco gets one, when he meets with his brother and gives a shockingly eloquent defense for the life he's lived and the choices he's made.
Immediately after that, when riding away from his brother's monastery with Blondie, he begins to gush about how close he and his brother are in spite of how they'd just had a loud fight. It's unclear if he's trying to save face or if it's his way of expressing affection, but it's rather sweet nonetheless. Blondie even seems to play along, despite having heard everything.
Angel Eyes gets one in the extended version, where he appears to show sadness at the sight of several wounded soldiers at a fort, before allowing the sergeant he has questioned to keep the alcohol he used to bribe him with.
Popcultural Osmosis: The music, the last 15 minutes, hell, even the title have all permeated pop culture.
POW Camp: Blondie and Tuco end up in a Union POW camp after their scavenging of Confederate uniforms backfires on them. Angel Eyes is running the show. It's nasty.
Prequel: For the earlier Dollars movies. Blondie doesn't begin this movie wearing the trademark poncho he wears by film's end, which carries over to A Fistful Of Dollars. The latter movie also has a tombstone with the date of death as 1873, and the American Civil War was fought ten years before that, in 1861–1865, so it is reasonable to assume that this is actually the Prequel.
Professional Killer: Angel Eyes is equal parts bounty hunter, mercenary, and assassin.
Psycho for Hire: Angel Eyes, who enjoys killing and torturing people every bit as much as he enjoys the money he makes from it.
Screw the Money, I Have Rules!: Oddly enough, Angel Eyes. One man hires him to kill another, and his target tries to pay him to kill the man who sent him. He accepts their money and kills them both, cementing him as an utter bastard. Because when he's paid, he always follows his job through. Which makes this a subversion, since he takes everybody's money while still refusing to go back on his word. And he later decides to go for the treasure himself.
Soundtrack Dissonance: The hauntingly beautiful "Story of a Soldier" is played while Tucco is brutally tortured.
Talking Is a Free Action: Subverted. The bounty hunter who tried unsuccessfully to kill Tuco right at the beginning of the movie locates him again much later, in the bath, naked. He's clearly got the jump on him, but can't resist going into a speech about how glad he is to have finally cornered him. Tuco immediately whips out the revolver around his neck and kills him, saying to the corpse, "When you have to shoot, shoot, don't talk." A memorable Throw It In by Eli Wallach.
Tempting Fate: When Tuco sees troops in gray coming towards him and Tuco and decides to greet them, he yells, "God is with us because he hates the Yanks, too!" Turns out, the uniforms are gray from the dust. Before the revelation, and after Tuco's proclamation, Blondie proceeds to lampshade this by saying, "God is not on our side 'cause he hates idiots also."
Thanatos Gambit: Blondie pretends to write a name of the grave where the gold is buried on the bottom of a rock. After the climatic showdown, Blondie tells Tuco that there was no name on the rock because the grave where the gold was has no name. Had Angel Eyes succeeded in killing Blondie and Tuco, he would have no leads to search for the gold. Then again, they were at Arch Stanton's grave a few minutes earlier, which was right next to the unmarked grave, so unless Angel Eyes is a complete idiot and fails to put two and two together, it's unlikely this backup plan would've succeeded.
Torture Always Works: Subverted. Angel Eyes tortures Tuco for information, but not Blondie. Angel Eyes explains that this isn't because Blondie won't break under torture, but because he knows talking won't save him, and thus is likely to lie.
Villainy Discretion Shot: Again, if you believe the list of crimes associated with Tuco read by the executioners.
War Is Hell: The American Civil War is integral to the fabric of the film, and Leone is here to serve it up raw. This is remarkable in a film known primarily as a classic Western. Tattered armies in retreat. Exhausted, demoralized drunken commanders, chaos, dirt and unregarded bodies in the sun. Corn cobs to eat, scabrous prison camps, and summary justice meted out on the streets. The trope is perhaps most strongly in play during the futile fight for a bridge that Blondie and Tuco witness. An unremarked mass of shallow war graves make up the film's final setting.
Blondie: I've never seen so many men wasted so badly.
Would Hit a Girl: In order to show how evil The Bad is, Angel Eyes relentlessly beats up a girl towards the beginning of the film. However, according to an interview with Lee Van Cleef, he refused to actually hit her, so they had to use his stunt man for that scene.
What a Senseless Waste of Human Life: Blondie remarks upon this after seeing a clash between Union and Confederate troops over a contested bridge.
Angel Eyes orignally had a moment like this where he would look sadly at a group of dead soldiers but it was removed in the final cut, probably because it took away from Angel Eyes uncaring and ruthless nature. It can be seen in the extended edition though.
What Happened to the Mouse?: Almost a literal one; what happened to the kitten Blondie was petting before he finds Tuco in the deserted village?
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