(I am attempting to make sure that by the end of the year I have watched every single one of the top 100 rated films according to IMDB as of 18th March 2005. I have 22 to go. The full list is here.)

I’m a big fan of Sergio Leone’s spaghetti westerns, especially the Clint Eastwood “man with no name” trilogy. In fact, I would never have claimed to have really liked westerns on the whole but that’s only when I think about all the macho, strutting “heroes of the wild west” type films which are full of the smug jingoism that resurfaced in many of the eighties hollywood actioners.

Leone treated the films differently. There are no heroes as such, just bad buys who do bad things and bad guys who do good things. The film might always turn out okay at the end but there’s always a bit of a sour taste left in your mouth and no-one ever gets to ride away cleanly into the sunset.

Once Upon A Time In The West is pretty much the same. Featuring the combined acting talents of Charles Bronson, Henry Fonda and Jason Robards (in the usual Leone roles of the good, the bad and the ugly respectively) it’s slightly more epic than the Eastwood trilogy which is unsurprising given that once set (the railway station set in the opening scene) cost more than the entire budget of his first film. Charles Bronson’s Harmonica isn’t quite as charismatic as Eastwood’s man with no name and is only really memorable for his theme tune (the one he plays himself with his harmonica… hence his name). But the film works and while I think it’s less iconic than the original trilogy, it’s still an interesting and watchable film and definitely worth watching. Wouldn’t personally have placed it so high in the top 100 list though.