Sergio Leone and Clint Eastwood team up for the first time and the partnership quickly bears fruit in this classic, scene-shaping western. While the plot is lifted almost verbatim from Akira Kurosawa's epic Yojimbo, the real devil is in the details as Leone challenges dozens of overplayed western tropes and instantly changes the genre's personality from a preachy, predictable windbag to a dirty, selfish, no-nonsense killer.

Eastwood is outstanding in his first outing as the Man With No Name, (curiously addressed as "Joe" in this chapter) bringing so much depth, certainty and silent substance to the role that it's tough to believe he hadn't been playing it for years. Although it's no comparison to the next two films in the trilogy, which really picks up when Lee Van Cleef enters the fray as Eastwood's dust-cloaked playmate, as warm-ups go it's second to none. At roughly half the length of its siblings, it's also much more digestible and straightforward. Whether that's a positive or a negative is entirely up to the viewer.