Argument (The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly)

Sergio Leone's The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly may be my all-time favorite film; if it isn't, it's definitely in the Top 5. A year or so ago, I wrote on this blog that Eli Wallach's portrayal of Tuco is perhaps the best supporting role in the history of filmdom.

What was I thinking?

Not that Wallach isn't outstanding. Quite the opposite, in fact. And the more I watch The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, the more I appreciate his spectacular performance.

Supporting role? Bollocks; Tuco is The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly's primary character, and I hereby apologize for my semantic blunder.

Nobody digs Clint Eastwood as Blondie/The Man With No Name more than I. He epitomizes cool. But Wallach as Tuco does the same while possessing more substance. (That said, I don't want Blondie to be more fleshed out, because, like Marvel Comics' Wolverine, he works better as an enigmatic archetype. Word to Jesus Christ.) Tuco is the most realized, most easily likeable (and despicible; he's that, too), most memorable character in the film. Eastwood's lines drip cool from their water vapors, but so do Wallach's*; and whereas Blondie is hardened, the definition of stolidity, Tuco is a wild card -- Like Peter Verkovensky, one is never sure whether he's playing a buffoon or genuinely being one. In fact, if one watches closely, Tuco becomes more of an enigma than Blondie.

There's a scene in the film where Blondie and Tuco depart from a monastery not long after the latter meets his brother, a monk, whom he has not seen in nine years. In the earlier scene, Tuco's brother, Pablo, shames him for deserting the family. The siblings' parents are both deceased, which is news to Tuco. Possibly the film's most dramatic moment, after the upbraiding Tuco retorts that, for men of their environment (word to 3rd Bass), only the priesthood and banditry are promises of a possibly better life, and that Pablo chose the cloth because he's "too much of a coward to do what I do." Pablo slaps him. Tuco responds by punching him out.

Afterwards, he says to Blondie:

"Even a tramp like me, no matter what happens, I know there's always a brother who won't refuse me a bowl of soup."

That single line sums up so much of Tuco's character: cunning, regretful, defiant, ashamed. And when Blondie offers him his cigar, Tuco, with an extraordinaryly subtle facial gesture, shrugs it all off, laughs, and instantly puts the near past behind him, choosing to focus on the unknown, intangible future.

In that way, Tuco is starkly more similar to you or me than is Blondie. Blondie is the character we want to be, wish we could be.

Tuco is the character we are.


* The Top Ten Tuco lines, so says me:

10)

"God is on our side because he hates the Yanks."

(Only because I'm a Red Sox fan.)

9)

"Don't die, I'll get you water. Stay there. Don't move, I'll get you water. Don't die until later."

8)

"But if you miss you had better miss very well. Whoever double-crosses me and leaves me alive, he understands nothing about Tuco."

7)

"One bastard goes in, another one comes out."

6)

"I like big fat men like you. When they fall they make more noise."

5)

"See you soon, id..." "id..." "ids..."

Blondie: "'Idiots'. It's for you."

4)

"I'm very happy you are working with me! And we're together again. I get dressed, I kill him and be right back."

Blondie: "Listen, I forgot to mention... He's not alone. There's five of 'em."

"Five?"

Blondie: "Yeah, five of 'em."

"So, that's why you came to Tuco. It doesn't matter, I'll kill them all."

3)

"You want to know who you are? Huh? Huh? You don't, I do, everyone does... you're the son of a thousand fathers, all bastards like you."

2)

"Hey, Blond! You know what you are? Just the greatest son-of-a-b-!"

1)

"When you have to shoot, shoot, don't talk."