The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

A closer look at the story

With the American Civil War at its height, three men set their sights on the same prize: a fortune in stolen gold buried somewhere in the Southwest. The taciturn Blondie and Tuco, a bandit with a price on his head, have a profitable if mutually suspicious arrangement going. When it emerges that the merciless gunman Angel Eyes is chasing the same money, their alliances and double-crosses become entangled with the chaos of war. Directed by Sergio Leone, who wrote it with Luciano Vincenzoni, Agenore Incrocci and Furio Scarpelli, the 161-minute 1966 film stars Clint Eastwood, Eli Wallach and Lee Van Cleef in a sweeping western epic.