Ugly West, The

January 3, 2012 @ 6:02 am

I rewatched this recently and realized I hadn’t rated it or written a review. I’ll make it short and sweet.

Harmonica: Perfect. Loved it. The story flowed greatly considering all the major cuts TMBTM made. 10/10

Two Glorious Bastards: Amazing editing by Boon. Not only did he delete one of the three title characters with ease he did some incredible sound work. Sure, not all the Cash songs work well, but it was really well done. The only complaint about this one is the audio levels on a couple of the songs seemed a little high for my ears (sorry I don’t know the names of which songs). 9/10

EDITED TO ADD: I watched the "Making of" clip that details the sound editing work done. I wish I could give it a 9.5, a lot of work went into editing Two Glorious Bastards.

DVD: Awesome work. Menus are beautiful. Special Features are great, especially Boon’s explanation of the audio editing he did. And I always get a kick out of seeing a BlueYoda mashup. 10/10

Overall score: 9/10, Almost Perfect.

February 23, 2011 @ 9:36 pm

Being a big fan of the TGTBTU full length movie and watched this with an open mind, as the cuts listed appeared to make it unwatchable, how wrong was I!

I really enjoyed the edit, it’s paced just right, you would never know that there’s any edits, even when you know there should be others in the scenes. It’s an 100% Eli & Clint movie, and I really like/admire these two actors. The sound track is good, however i thought the fade out on a couple of the tracks was too quick at fading out, and maybe should have been faded out much slower. Having said that the soundtrack is very well constucted, and a lot of work has been done to create it, and sounds great. Maybe a fan edit soundtrack release?

Really enjoyed it and I will watch it again, it’s a cracking take on the classic film, going to watch ‘Once Upon A Time In The West’ edit later and review shortly.

Review by chancer127 — February 27, 2011 @ 10:24 am

Having only seen Once Upon A Time In The West once many years ago i have very little recall of the original story.

First let me say that Henry Fonda plays one mean SOB and is truely menacing in this, due to the edit length he’s on screen quite a lot,he’s an actor that I never really thought about, he’s at the top of his game in this, well worth the veiwing to see him.

The two main actors Bronson and Fonda share most of the screen time in this edit, I enjoyed it very much, it played out like a TV western show (-the black fades outs i was expecting an advert to come on-)and purely because of it’s running time it felt like an episode of an old western tv show, to me anyway.(But far better content!)

I got a little confused in the last 10 minutes but once the edit played out and I worked out what had happened it’s genuis and very clever the way the edit has been constructed, but i did have to ‘think’ about it to work it out.

Enjoyed the movie and soundtrack THANKS.

Harmonica: As a massive fan of the Once Upon A Time in the West, Sergio Leone and spaghetti westerns in general, this was a really fun watch. The removal of Cheyenne was very well done, especially how you got Harmonica off the train. The rescore was definitely the weakest point of the edit, not bad, I liked the music from Kill Bill, but the Harmonica's hip-hop theme used at the beginning and end didn't work. Will definitely watch again and strongly recommend.

(Review for HARMONICA)
I first saw Once Upon a Time in the West a couple months ago, and while I enjoyed it, it was painfully slow. When the final duel took place and the reveal of who Harmonica was, it made me realise that the film really should've been about Harmonica & Frank's rivalry, and not the extraneous plotlines that took up most of the film. This edit is exactly what I wanted from this film. It cuts over half of the film's run-time, yet does not feel rushed at all. TMBTM wisely chooses which scenes to keep and which to cut. Additionally, a lot of kept scenes are tightened, which fixes the poor pacing of the original. It's hard to believe the original runs at nearly 3 hours after watching this.

(Spoilers for the edit)
Cheyenne is completely cut. While I liked his character, he was not necessary to Harmonica's story, and this edit really proves that.

Comments on the edit:
*not a fan of the rescore with the hip-hop Harmonic theme at the McBain farm shooting, and the final stand-off. The original has more weight to it.
*very good cut making it seem like the train it cuts to (after the McBain farm shooting) is the train Harmonica is on in the opening scene.
*Re-orders scenes so that Harmonica looking for Frank comes after Frank being introduced via the McBain farm shooting. Good choice, as now the audience know who Harmonica is after.
*The cut between Frank threatening Harmonica and shooting Wobbles is quite sudden.
*The intercutting of 2 (or 3?) different scenes to make it look like Morton releases Harmonica and pays him to go after Frank is very, very clever. This cut is crucial in eliminating Cheyenne from the film.
*Perhaps more should've have been kept between Frank & Morton to explain their conflict better, since in this edit it's not that clear why Morton decides to have Frank killed. I guess we can assume Morton saw Frank as a rival and decided to kill him before Frank replaced him.
*Minor gripe, but I would've ended the film on a shot of Harmonica rather than Jill.

Overall, this was a brilliant edit, and it'll definitely be my go-to on future re-watches of "...in the West". TMBTM has really done an excellent job here of creating a more concise and slightly altered narrative which is, in my opinion, superior to that of the original's.

Would really like to see this remastered (preferably without the hip hop rescore) one day in HD, as the film has been re-released on Blu-ray since this edit was made. And I look forward to watching the second edit of this anthology, "Two Glorious Bastards" by boon - if I can get my hands on it.

Thank you Boon and TMBTM! :]X