Actually, Last Man Standing was made almost thirty years after this one, and is effectively a remake. Bruce Willis was running around his parent's backyard playing cowboy when this one came out. If you really want to be blown away, watch Yojimbo - the original Kurosawa version of this story. It's the best of the three. Another classic spaghetti western made from a Kurosawa film is The Magnificent Seven, based on Kurosawa's Seven Samurai. And to go even farther afield, George Lucas borrowed plot, character, and storytelling elements from Kurosawa's The Hidden Fortress to make Star Wars (especially using two clowns as point-of-view characters - R2D2 and C3P0). And for that matter, Kurosawa was influenced by the look and feel of John Ford's westerns. Heck, the man with no name theme has come full circle back to Japan, with the Tarantino-produced Sukiyaki Western Django doing the postmodern take.
But back to A Fistful of Dollars... the beauty of Sergio Leone's work is that he took the superb story and character relationships of Yojimbo, but translated them into a cultural context familiar to Western audiences. Yojimbo is just too foreign for many Americans to watch willingly. And Leone did it in a way that really stands on its own, with its own vibe. A great story is only the first step to a great movie. And Fistful of Dollars, unlike most other Yojimbo remakes, is a GREAT movie.
But back to A Fistful of Dollars... the beauty of Sergio Leone's work is that he took the superb story and character relationships of Yojimbo, but translated them into a cultural context familiar to Western audiences. Yojimbo is just too foreign for many Americans to watch willingly. And Leone did it in a way that really stands on its own, with its own vibe. A great story is only the first step to a great movie. And Fistful of Dollars, unlike most other Yojimbo remakes, is a GREAT movie.
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