by Andrew Wright

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

dir. Leone

Opens Fri Sept 5

Cinema 21

Bah na na na naa. When it comes to the big screen, nobody knew how to super-size it like Sergio Leone. Despite scads of imitators, the director’s patented style of mammoth closeups, endless panoramas and decade-spanning gunfights have proven impossible to replicate. The final installment in his “DollarsÓ trilogy, 1967’s The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly remains Leone’s defining work: Once Upon a Time in the West may be bigger, Once Upon a Time in America might be wiser, but nothing can equal its hysterically gonzo kick. I could watch it every night.

For the TBS-deprived, the plot involves an unheroic trio of treasure hunters (Clint Eastwood, Eli Wallach, and the badder-than-badass Lee Van Cleef) seeking buried loot within the wreckage of the Civil War. After a slight detour to win the war for the North, said quest climaxes in a magnificent triple-finale within the world’s bleakest graveyard. It may be narratively light and proudly amoral (Eastwood’s character is “goodÓ in only the most liberal sense of the word), but any such concerns pale next to the director’s distinct worldview, in which small town streets stretch wider than eight-lane freeways, gargoyle-faced henchmen lurk behind every tumbleweed, and Ennio Morricone’s majestic electric coyote score rules over all.

Any chance to see this on the big screen should frankly cause a stampede, but the newly remastered print ups the ante by featuring 20 minutes of footage unseen (and freshly dubbed by both the surviving cast members and a questionable Van Cleef impersonator) since the original Italian release.

Aside from a few choice moments of character growth (Wallach’s dirtbag bandito, now more than ever, emerges as the moral center of the film), the restored scenes don’t really alter the preexisting masterpiece. Still, trite as it may sound, if you haven’t seen this wacked-out Western macrocosm in the theater, you really haven’t seen it at all. After nearly 40 years, it still kicks ass and calls down the thunder.