User Reviews

Leone's West (2004)

*** (out of 4)

Fun 20-minute featurette takes a look at the Western's of Sergio Leone. THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY stars Clint Eastwood and Eli Wallach are on hand as are film critic Richard Schickel, producer Alberto Grimaldi and the English dubbing director Mickey Knox. All five men talk about what makes Leone's Westerns so special with Schickel telling us a nice history of Spaghetti Westerns and how no one really took them serious until Leone got involved. From here both Eastwood and Wallach talk about how they got involved in the productions and tell us various stories about the now legendary director. If you're a fan of the director or the film in question then you're obviously going to want to watch this as you get all sorts of good behind-the-scenes stories but it's also a lot of fun just getting to hear what the director was like. The various language issues make for some fun stories by the two stars and one can't help but wish this was a tad bit longer or featured more people to discuss the work.

I have to admit that I looked forward to a documentary, or interviews, regarding Leone's influence on Quentin Tarantino. Sergio Leone is Tarantino's favorite director, and THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY is his favorite film of all time (or so says a sticker on the front of the new Special Edition DVD). However, there aren't any interviews with him - just a few with Eastwood, Wallach, and Schickel, the film historian who provides a commentary track on this and ONCE UPON A TIME IN America.

Overall this is a decent documentary but nothing special. I was disappointed in the fact that it seems to repeat itself. It's OK but as the highlight of the SE DVD, it's quite mediocre. I rarely upgrade my DVDs, and already own the original DVD release of UGLY... so I expected more when I bought the Special Edition.

It's not bad. The documentary is fine, and overall the DVD is worth a purchase. The sound is better. I didn't notice much difference in film quality, but the sound is less grainy with 5.1 surround sound. However there really could have been so much more done with this DVD...MGM is horrible at Special Editions -- they pretty much release all their DVDs on SE, but for some reason fail to create anything of substance. As with THE USUAL SUSPECTS and TO LIVE AND DIE IN L.A., there seems to be a lot on the surface, and there even IS a lot, but the quality itself somehow seems shallow...as if they're just trying to draw in lots of customers, which I guess they are.

I also tend to hate the packaging on MGM DVDs, although this one was pretty good.