This pulse-pounding follow-up to
Sergio Leone's
A Fistful of Dollars brings back
Clint Eastwood as the serape-clad, cigar-chewing "Man With No Name." Engaged in an ongoing battle with bounty hunter Col. Douglas Mortimer (
Lee Van Cleef), the Man joins forces with his enemy to capture homicidal bandit Indio (
Gian Maria Volontè). Both the Eastwood and Van Cleef characters are given understandable motivations for their bloodletting tendencies, something that was lacking in
A Fistful of Dollars. In both films, however, the violence is raw and uninhibited -- and in many ways, curiously poetic. Leone's tense, tight close-ups, pregnant pauses, and significant silences have since been absorbed into the standard spaghetti Western lexicon; likewise,
Ennio Morricone's haunting musical score has been endlessly imitated and parodied. For a Few Dollars More was originally titled Per Qualche Dollaro in Più; it would be followed by the last and best of the
Man with No Name trilogy, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide