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The Hindu : Video watchThis fortnight at seventymm.comA Fistful of DollarsDirected by Sergio LeoneCast: Clint Eastwood, Marianne Koch, Gian Maria VolonteStory by A. Bonzonni, Victor AndresScreenplay by Sergio LeoneFor a movie that started it all — from launching Clint Eastwood’s career to arguably the greatest mainstream Hindi film ever, “Sholay” and also perhaps the worst remake (RGV are you listening?) — “A Fistful of Dollars” is a spare, minimum-fuss movie.Shot in Spain and Italy, “A Fistful of Dollars” tells the story of an anonymous drifter who comes to the wasted town of San Miguel where two ultra-violent gangs — the Baxters and the Rojos fight for control. However, why the two gangs fight for this impoverished dustbowl is anyone’s guess.All the men folk have died, there are no women in this town - only widows - and the only person who does good business is the undertaker. It is to this place that the magnificent stranger (that was the movie’s original name and it was changed to “A Fistful of Dollars” three days before its 1967 release) comes to stir things up. He sets the two rival gangs against each other and rids the town of all anti-social elements and rides off into the sunset.The movie, the first of Sergio Leone’s “Dollars” trilogy and is a little rough around the edges for it. The good thing is the stuff that characterised the following two movies — “For a Few Dollars More” and “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly” — from a laconic anti-hero whose sharp shooting is matched by a sharper tongue, the psychotic villain, the wide shots showing expanses of shrub land as well as the tight close ups, the shoot outs and the atonal music has a novel feel to it.There are urban legends aplenty about the film from the fact that Leone was not impressed with schoolmate Ennio Morricone’s earlier work but became a…More