The Rule of Twos
27 November 2006
The curse of following a formula is that you will necessarily be compared to the best examples of that formula. And the best of this pocket of movies is the Leone stuff. We've actually, I think, adjusted our definitions of camp and happy excess to suit those, because of a couple elements that appeal: the musical riffs, the Eastwood grin.

This one has a stylized west, absolutely no females in any frame. Good, bad and samurai. As with the Leone/samurai model, all the plot devices revolve around the noble rules of "the guild" of gunfighters for hire. All the humor is based on coolness associated with lethality. For those of us that like this sort of thing, the ultimate trip starts with Kurosawa, runs through Leone's copy and ends with Walter Hill's "Last Man Standing.

So this is a sort of waste of time, is less of everything that is defined elsewhere. But if you stumble on this, pay attention to the rule of twos. Its a simple way for writers to create superficial folds after the manner of Tolstoy.

Here you have two gunslingers, two bad guys, two factions in the good guys (the breeders), two comic sons, two more comic Mexican servants of the sons. If there were real writing going on, you'd see reflections from one pair to the other, tensions between pairs reflected in certain pairs and so on.

Ted's Evaluation -- 1 of 3: You can find something better to do with this part of your life.
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