Though not the first “Spaghetti Western”, 1964’s A Fistful of Dollars became the initial genre entry to make a major international impact. It also helped elevate a TV actor named Clint Eastwood to film stardom.

Two rival families control the small town of San Miguel. This means that the Baxter and Rojos clans contend with each other for dominance.

Into this setting rides a mysterious loner “Joe” (Eastwood). He senses an opportunity to profit from this context, so he works to play the two sides against each other for his own gain.

I watched this Blu-ray in summer 2025 and the screening marked my first viewing of Fistful. Although I saw the third film in the “Man With No Name” trilogy – 1966’s The Good, The Bad and the Ugly - at least a couple times previously, I never got around to Fistful and its 1965 sequel For a Few Dollars More until now.

Given that Ugly exists as one of the all-time great Westerns, Fistful comes with big shoes to fill. While it can’t live up to the standards set by the 1966 epic, but that doesn’t make it a bad little Western.

And “little” seems like an appropriate term for Fistful, as the movie offers a fairly small-scale tale. Of the three “Man With No Name” films, it brings by far the shortest running time.

This one lasts a succinct 100 minutes. Director Sergio Leone would expand More to 132 minutes and then stretch Ugly all the way to an epic 176 minutes.

Not that 100 minutes offers a brief running time, but it clearly implies Fistful will deliver a less sprawling narrative than its sequels. Indeed, the film comes pretty light on plot, as it mostly digs into character shenanigans without a terribly strong overall thrust.

Which seems fine with me, mainly because Leone moves along the tale pretty well. Although I can’t call this the most efficient Western I’ve seen, it nonetheless progresses without too many superfluous detours and keeps us on target much of the way.

Again, the simple “plot” helps. Without a lot to bog down the viewer, Fistful sticks with the basics and ensures a brisk little adventure.

The biggest appeal here comes from Eastwood. As I alluded earlier, prior to his collaborations with Leone, Eastwood’s main claim to fame came as the lead of TV’s Rawhide from 1959 to 1965.

While this show did make Eastwood a star, Eastwood never would’ve become a legend without something after the series’ cancellation. Of course, if Eastwood didn’t follow-up the Leone films with his own hits like the Dirty Harry flicks and many others, he’d not be viewed as Hollywood royalty either.

But the Leone movies did a lot to boost Eastwood, and we can see how the “Cline Eastwood Persona” evolved here. There’s not a big leap to be made from Eastwood’s taciturn take on “Joe” – who then spawned “Manco” in Few Dollars More and “Blondie” in Ugly - to Harry and his other grizzled roles, so this becomes an obvious starting point for what we now see as the rest of the actor’s career.

Eastwood does well as our anti-heroic lead. He brings just the right sense of weariness and cynicism to the part.

The actor clearly elevates a project that could’ve sputtered without him. That doesn’t deliver a criticism of Leone’s direction, as I believe Fistful still would’ve been enjoyable even with a weaker lead.

Nonetheless, Eastwood’s work makes the simplistic tale seem more substantial than otherwise might be the case. He so perfectly embodies the loner wanderer that it seems impossible to imagine this series without him.

All of this leads to a tight and intriguing Western. While not the best of its own franchise, Fistful nonetheless turns into an engaging adventure.

A Fistful of Dollars appears in an aspect ratio of 2.35:1 on this Blu-ray Disc. While watchable, the image came with more than a few problems.

Sharpness seemed adequate but not much better. While the movie showed reasonable delineation, it lacked great definition and could seem somewhat tentative, as factor exacerbated by light edge haloes.

Jagged edges never turned into a concern, but I noticed some shimmering on one occasion. Grain felt chunky and somewhat unnatural, and minor but persistent specks cropped up through the film.

As expected, the movie’s palette leaned toward the arid side of the street, though it took on a fairly blue/teal vibe a lot of the time as well. Colors looked adequate, as they showed reasonable reproduction without real impact.

Blacks tended to feel a bit too dense, while shadows offered acceptable delineation – well, outside of the inevitably too dark “day for night” shots. Though I didn’t think this became a bad presentation, it also brought a movie in clear need of an upgrade.

I also didn’t find much to like about the movie’s DTS-HD MA 5.1 soundtrack, but given the typically iffy quality of audio from these Italian Westerns, this came as no surprise. Taken from a monaural source, the multichannel rendition lacked a lot of expansiveness.

Indeed, the soundfield tended to feel pretty monaural much of the time. A lot of the track appeared largely concentrated in the front center,

Still, the soundscape opened up in a moderate manner, mainly in terms of movement across the front. Horses and other elements spread across those speakers in a moderately impressive manner and also showed fairly solid placement.

Surround usage became more limited. The back speakers kicked into action occasionally – mainly during the louder action scenes – but they remained passive a lot of the time.

Audio quality came with the drawbacks typical of 1960s Italian flicks. With all the dialogue looped, speech tended to seem unnatural, and the lines also leaned edgy and brittle.

Music felt adequate but without much range, and effects usually came across as rough and shrill. Some minor bass impact popped up at times, but not much. Given the age and origins of the track, I thought it earned a “C+”, but it suffered from the limitations I anticipated.

Note that the disc also came with a Dolby Digital monaural presentation that replicated the original 1964 audio. It came with sonics fairly similar to those of the 5.1 version.

Actually, I thought the mono track appeared a bit brighter than its lossless counterpart. Nonetheless, it didn’t come with superior audio quality.

When we go to the disc’s extras, we open with an audio commentary from film historian Sir Christopher Frayling. He provides a running, screen-specific look at story/characters, influences and genre domains, cast and crew, some production elements and general thoughts about the film.

For the most part, Frayling offers a good look at the film, especially when he discusses controversies related to how Fistful “borrowed” from Akira Kurosawa’s Yojimbo. However, Frayling loses steam as he goes, so the track doesn’t turn into a fully engaging affair.

We get more from the film historian via the 18-minute, 40-second Chrisopher Frayling Archives. He leads us through his collection of Sergio Leone memorabilia in this entertaining reel.

A New Kind of Hero lasts 22 minutes, 54 seconds. It features Frayling again.

The featurette discusses the 1960s reinvention of the Western as well as the Kurosawa influence, the opening credits, casting, and some production topics. While fine on its own, “Hero” largely feels redundant after the commentary, as it only comes with a few new notes.

We finally hear from someone other than Frayling via A Few Weeks in Spain. It goes for eight minutes, 33 seconds and involves actor Clint Eastwood.

We learn about Eastwood’s participation in Fistful and various memories. Despite the brevity of the chat, I appreciate that we get info from Eastwood, and he provides worthwhile memories.

Tre Voci goes for 11 minutes, 12 seconds. This one delivers remarks from producer Alberto Grimaldi, screenwriter Sergio Donati and actor Mickey Knox.

Across these interviews, we learn about aspects of their involvement with Fistful. They add some good thoughts to what we already know.

Next we go to the six-minute, 20-second Not Ready For Primetime, during which filmmaker Monte Hellman discusses the prologue he created for the TV broadcast of Fistful. This turns into an intriguing look at a largely forgotten presentation of the film.

We also get a look at the actual Network Prologue. Along with an intro from Leone collector Howard Fridkin, it goes for seven minutes, 44 seconds.

Fridkin explains how he came to record the rare prologue, and then we see an official (Harry Dean Stanton) recruit Joe (unnamed double) to clean up a corrupt town. All of this exists to “sanitize” Joe’s potentially unsavory actions in the theatrical version.

The “Prologue” plays out in as clumsy a manner as that synopsis implies. The attempts to hide the fact Eastwood didn’t reprise his role become hilarious, and the whole scene feels as awkward as one might anticipate. Still, it’s a fun archival footnote.

A collection of Location Comparisons goes for five minutes, 22 seconds and shows places used for the shoot as they appeared in the movie along with how they looked in the early 2000s. Some commentary would be nice but this still turns into a decent extra.

Advertisements complete the disc. We find two trailers along with 10 radio spots.

While it acts as the weakest entry in the ‘Man With No Name’ trilogy, A Fistful of Dollars nonetheless delivers an engaging Western. With a small-scale plot and some evocative moments, it works well. The Blu-ray provides iffy picture and audio along with a good roster of bonus materials. I like the movie but this Blu-ray could use an upgrade.