Good, The Bad and The Ugly, The (Special Edition) (UK)

Intro-IMO, arguably Sergio Leone`s best and most memorable work (and Quentin Tarantino`s favourite movie) some might disagree with me and will say that Once Upon a time in the West is Leone`s better work. The Good The Bad The Ugly is one film that will put todays films to shame and in the shade. The story is set during the Civil War(with some anachronisms), where three guys(The Man with no name makes his first appearance) are on the hunt for $200,000 in gold but they have each other to contend with. The movie is digitally restored and remastered and is the full Italian cut, putting the film to 3 hours long.

If your familar with Leone`s trademarks, TGTBTU is no exception. His trademarks includes, extreme close-ups, often focusing on the eyes and using themes for each character (scores by Morricone). Of all the 3 dollars trilogy, this ones the best of the 3, it`s comical(Tuco the reason for this?), fast paced(despite lasting 3 hours) and has a memorable coyote howl for the film`s theme tune.

It still annoys why this film is an 18 when it could easily be given a 12? That`s ancient UK for you, the extremely stubborn BBFC will never downgrade a rating for a film that has been rated 18 in the past.

Video- Video quality is acceptable. Present in 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen, the film is brought back to life after painstaking restoration from the boys at Triage. Colours are fairly sharp. There are a few to occaisional bits of dirt and film grain that appear throught the film and the picture does look a little soft a times. There is a notorious scene that has `yellowing` during a conversation with Blondie and Tuco as they go to get "$200,000" but that is only shown for a few seconds. It`s also free of edge enhancement(if any obvious signs).

Audio- Acceptable for me but others may object to this such as purists etc etc. The Good, The Bad and The Ugly has been remastered from it`s original mono to a "cinematic" DD 5.1. Despite remastered from the original sound, there is not much use of the rear speaker except when there are guns firing and then it sounds odd. This newly mixed soundtrack is rather subtle, hollow sounding and not the kind of soundtrack which is action oriented such as an explosion, although this happens in this film. Some reviewers may object to the sound for several reasons.

-It`s presented in DD 5.1. Purists would prefer mono since the proper sound mix is mono.
- The gun shots have been replaced with cartoon like sounds and as a result it sounds very artifical and generic.
-English, French and German soundtracks are only offered. The original Italian mono is missing and many like to watch the film with the subtitles on.
-(Irrelevant but worth mentioning)Tuco and Blondie sounds aged in certain scenes.The reason for this is due to the scenes being cut from the US version and that the English speaking cast didn`t not have the chace to re-dub their scenes as it was filmed without any sound. Many would say "If it ain`t broke, DON`T FIX IT!!!" The deleted scene with Van Cleef visting the Rebel Camp is hilarious since he died in 1989 and is replaced with a sound-a-like.

Extras- We have bits and pieces featurettes on this SE. Disc one offers a commentary from Clint`s biographer. Not very interesting to listen to as an audio commentary by Clint Eastwood`s biographer, Richard Schickel(sp?). He says very little in the commentary and when he does say something, it is very dry and at times it seems irrelevent to the film. What I want is a proper commentary from a guy who actually knows his stuff inside-out. There are no exceptions to that rule. Inexcusable.

Disc 2 there are 6 featurettes, Leone`s West, The Leone style, The who lost the civil war, Restoring TGTBTU, Il Maestro Parts I and II. They are all very short. Il Maestro Part II is not worth looking at since it`s a repeat from Part I. They are self explanatory and worth looking at except the last featurette. There are contributions from the 2 surviving casts, Eastwood and Wallach, Eastwood`s biographer and many more. Why doesn`t MGM just keep join them all together to make a single 90 min documentary? quality is better than quantity.

Tuco`s extended scene is here. It has not been remastered since restoring it would look horrible if branched into the main feature(according to Triage, the guys who restored TGTBTU) so an archival copy has been transfered in this release. It`s a bit tedious to view the extended scene as I get the idea what happens to Tuco.

A French trailer is worth looking at. It contains footage not in either versions of TGTBTU.

The 4 easter eggs are easy to find. They are basically short segments of interviews with Eli and Clint ranging from 10 seconds to 1 minute.

Overall- Being nearly 40 years old, The Good, The Bad and The Ugly is one of the most entertaining movies I`ve ever seen and it inspires many film-makers, whether young or old. The Mexican shoot out is copied by John Woo(2 guys aiming guns towards each other) and then mimicked by Quentin Tarantino(several guys holding guns towards each other). Violent(moderate but lots of killings),funny and very stylish.

I would give this 10/10 but it losses the mark however, I would only give the overall mark 10/10 if:

-There is 5.1 English AND Italian. The original English AND Italian mono should also be include.
-3X1hr documentaries replaces the bits and pieces featurettes.