The first picture in the famous “Dollars” trilogy created by director Sergio Leone (“Once Upon A Time In The West”) definitely isn’t fantastic but it is an effort worthy of Western fans’ viewing because it does have some really good moments in it.

In “A Fistful Of Dollars”, Clint Eastwood (“Sudden Impact”, “Heatbreak Ridge”) stars as the ‘Man With No Name’, who this time rides into a dysfunctional town split into two sections due to having two rival families named the Baxters and Rojos so he plays the two off against each other; getting rich as part of the plan.

I really like the Man With No Name because he has no name. He’s an unsung hero unlike James Bond, John McClane and Superman. I also love that he’s an anti-hero as opposed to your run-of-the-mill good guy. Clint Eastwood does a superb job creating one of the most iconic screen personas both of his interesting career and cinema in general. The other characters aren’t particularly great as they severely lack any great level of intrigue, which is something Man With No Name has. Also they’re not particularly well acted unlike Man With No Name. The main character is good so I guess the rest of the characters can be forgiven for not being fascinating.

“A Fistful Of Dollars” has some cunning Western moments but it isn’t brilliant throughout. Although the film is very short (it’s only 95 minutes) it still feels a little long so perhaps having ten minutes shaved off it wouldn’t have been a bad thing. If you like Westerns then this isn’t a bad choice at all because you’ve got some shootouts, some bad Mexicans and some decent one-liners. “A Fistful Of Dollars” introduced the world to Clint Eastwood as not just a television star and it was the first ‘real’ spaghetti Western.