The Unseen #28: Joe Kidd

Well as more or less every blog except mine has taken the time to note. Clint Eastwood turned 80 this year, continuing his reign as this world’s leading source of awesomeness. I love Clint something fierce so I thought I’d throw in my belated appreciation by writing up one of Clint’s lesser known films, while knocking out another Unseen while I’m at it. (If you really want to see how its done take your spurs over to Agitation Of The Mind.)



Why’d I Buy It? Given to me during the great Insomniac closing of Aught 8.

Why Haven’t I Watched It?: Its one of those movies I’ve caught in bits and pieces over the years without seeing it all the way through. Take that lack of urgency as you will.

How Was It?: Fine.

Joe Kidd is the toughest kind of film to write about as its neither bad enough to get someone real worked up, nor good enough to warrant any kind of defense. Its competent. And that’s about it. Like Two Mules For Sister Sarah (which is a markedly superior film) it just kind of goes through the paces, adding only some vague socialist leanings its afraid to commit to.

The real problem at the heart of Joe Kidd is that it wants to be Bullet For The General and doesn’t have the balls. It’s a film unabashedly on the side of a bunch of poor Mexican immigrants who are being forced off their land by an imperialist American government and total asshole Robert Duvall. Eastwood’s Kidd is introduced as an anti authoritarian bad ass currently in jail for threatening to piss on the courthouse.

So naturally Kidd’s sympathies are with the oppressed natives, and it seems fairly clear that he’ll join up with them, until it turns out that their leader Louis Chamas (John Saxon in brown face with a Frito Bandito accent), is kind of an asshole as well. Torturing one of Kidd’s men and killing his livestock in retaliation for Kidd murdering one of his men. This kind of ambivilance could be confused for depth, but really its just the movie hedging its bets in a very craven way. Not wanting to commit itself to anything that could be construed as anti American. Eastwood joins up with a deliciously evil Robert Duvall, playing just an irredeemable prick, and goes to hunt Chamas down.

The movie has the confused focus and tone of a script that has under gone plenty of rewrites (It should be noted that this script comes before this was endemic so it could just be poor writing). It feels uncannily like the first and third act were written by a different person then the second. Of course Elmore Leonard is the only credited writer on the picture, and as evidenced by Valdez Is Coming, one of my favorite Westerns of all time, he knows how to write a great western. I can't help but be suspicious that someone might have been brought in to reign in some of Leonard's more incendiary stuff .

Of course any film with Clint Eastwood, Robert Duvall, and John Saxon chewing the same scenery, is not fully devoid of pleasure. And the film does have one legimently great scene. The aforementioned killing of Chalma’s man, which is played out at leisure in a bar, with Clint idly pouring himself a beer whilst propping up a mean looking shotgun in between standoffs. Old hand John Sturges milks it for all it is worth. But there’s a paucity to the rest of the film that’s surprising from Sturges.

Like I said, Joe Kidd isn’t a bad movie. It has its moments and some great lines from auto pilot Clint. Why its down right decent. But its just a modest B movie, which has nothing particular to distinguish it. A film that befits its semi forgotten reputation.

The 25: Part 8: For A Few Dollars More

(The twenty five is an examination of the twenty five films that made me a cinephile. These aren’t necessarily what I consider best movies, nor are they necessarily my favorite. Though in some cases they are both. Instead these are the films that made the biggest most indenialable impression on me. Films that if they hadn’t hit a certain way at a certain time I would not be the same film goer that I am today. They’re the twenty five.)




I can’t think of another foreign filmmaker I knew before Sergio Leone. Despite the presence of Eastwood, Leone’s films remain so distinctly alien from their American counterparts, that they make the transition for the budding film fan easier. Familiar genre, sure, familiar stars yes, but the tone and style is so different, that they might as well be transmissions from Mars.

My Father loved the old Westerns, the works of Hawks, Ford, and Hathaway. It wasn’t until later in my film going life that I was able to appreciate those films for the poetic masterpieces that they were. Despite the fact that as a kid I had an unusually high tolerance for older film, at the time I was merely bored, and wondering why we weren’t watching a Sean Connery Bond instead.

The Leone movies though, those were different. Savage, stylistically, grimy, and funny. Wild in the way the other films weren’t.

I don’t know if there’s an opening shot to a movie I like better then For A Few Dollars More. Unconnected to the main narrative of the film, an unknown man rides on the plain, an unseen rifleman draws a bead on him, and blows him off his horse. Which run’s neighing across the plain before exploding into a stark Red and White animation as Ennio Morricone’s score comes in.

You now have my attention.

While it might not have anything to do with the film’s story it sells the tone plenty. Leone’s world is harsh and unforgiving and death is cheap and undignified. John Wayne never rode here.

For A Few Dollars More is often seen as the least of Leone’s Man With No Name Trilogy. But its my favorite of the three. Operatic where The Good The Bad And The Ugly is mythical. Expansive where Fistful Of Dollars is Claustrophobic, For A Few Dollars More strikes the perfect balance in the series. While making room for a great performance as Lee Van Cleef, as the hard vengeance seeking hero Colonel Mortimer. Van Cleef controls every scene he’s in with an unfakeable hardness, and competence. Introduced stopping a train for his own convenience before hunting down a bounty with his wonderfully preposterous, borderline fetishtic rifles, in a fantastic scene.


All around this has to be one of the best cast Westerns ever made. Even Klaus Kinski shows up for the fun, in a performance that impressed me before I knew I should be impressed. It’s a small role but he steals every shot he’s in as a walking twitch of a man with a hunch back, who seems .2 seconds from going off at any given moment. The moment where Van Cleef casually strikes a match off his face, daring him to break rank and do something about it, is one of the tensest in the film.


Indio, played by Gian Volonte, returned from Fistful and playing a much more effective bad guy then the dandyish Ramon in same, is still one of my favorite villains. Savage and brutal, but elegant and thoughtful as well. A self reflective monster with just the right touch of sadness to him to make him scary.



But really it all comes down to Clint. Far from the clean cut heroes of the American Western’s The Man With No Name is a harsh, sneering, badass with a fully developed anti authoritarian streak. Watching him bust down a corrupt sheriff after doing his job for him, is a rare joy. He inhabits every scene with a swagger, dominates every conversation and gun fight with confidence and ease, and yet seems strangely vulnerable before Leone’s lens. For all his iconic glory there always seems that possibility that The Man With No Name will meet his match. He never knows all the angles he just thinks he does.

Its not just the actors in top form. Morricone’s score, sparse and haunting is one of his greatest. Particularly the central pocket watch theme which ends up at the core of most of the films major sequences.

Leone’s in top form as well. The film contains many of his best sequences. The eerie early morning prison raid set to Morricone’s tolling bell. Indio delivering his parable from the pulpet of the abandoned church, gives a normal “master plan” sequence a delightful satirical edge. The final showdown with Indio’s gang, both the town clearing shoot out which is some of the greatest action Leone ever shot, and the final showdown between Mortimer and Indio which is right up their with the climax of The Good The Bad And The Ugly for sheer tension. Clint in the aftermath piling his bounty of bodies on his mule cart adding up his winnings with ghastly good humor.

Its no secret that Leone’s greatness comes from his oft parodied ability to stretch a sequence far beyond its natural limits. But its not just his famous shoot outs that employ the technique. Take for example the scene in which Indio’s troops scope out the bank, counting how long it takes for the guard’s to make their circuit. A normal director would have left it at that, having delivered the exposition that the gang have cased the bank. Leone stretches out the scene as long as it can go. Cutting to each gang member (and our heroes) as they count off the guards steps. In the process he makes the scene unforgettable.

Despite the number of films I’ve seen since For A Few Dollars More, its wonderful odd foreignness still exists. It has a structure and a tone nearly unrecognizable to when compared to the Robert McKee school of act driven screenplay. Take the comic interlude involving a lusty properties of a hotel and her nebbish dwarf of a husband, which Leone lets play out beyond all reason. The effects charming, like watching a small comic interlude between the plays at a Vaudeville house.

Despite the effect on me, I can’t pretend that For A Few Dollars More made me run out into the street demanding fast helpings of world cinema. But it was a start. Others would come and build on that start, which we will come in their own time.

At the time For A Few Dollars More is what it remains for me today. A Ferociously entertaining film directed by a master and starring one.