This essay is a more in depth analysis of film than I've posted on Watch & Write up to this point, it is an examination of war as it is depicted in the western using two primary films for evidence. The texts are The Good, the Bad, & the Ugly and The Good, the Bad & the Weird. While it's not necessary to have seen both of the films to understand the essay it will help a great deal. Obviously, massive spoiler's for both films throughout.
The gun, a staple of the Western film genre from the beginning is the genre’s primary tool for doling out violence. The gun’s used by the characters of the Western are frequently attached to the historical setting the Western purports to represent. This provides a symbolic connection to the Western’s love affair with war. As the Western has expanded away from America and into other countries, it’s connection to war and conflict has expanded away from the most prominent conflict of that time period, the American Civil War. Through the eyes of other cultures, other conflicts would come to stand in for the Civil War. As the American Western died and was reborn as the Revisionist Western it also evolved from justifying violence through war, to condemning it. Through the lens of the gun, I look at a Western set in the American West, Sergio Leone’s The Good, the Bad, & the Ugly to one that is not, The Good, the Bad, the Weird directed by Kim Jee-woon. Both films are engaging with war in their own way, drawing connections to a war that’s relevant to their time and place through specifically chosen weaponry and what violence is carried out with it.
The, Good, the Bad, & the Ugly represents the familiar Western setting and by association its relation to the Civil War. The time period is deeply embedded in the plot itself, Blondie and Tuco are actively ripping off the Union military in the beginning; using Tuco’s infamy to take advantage of the bureaucracy that repeatedly rewards Blondie for his capture. This association with the war is explicit in Leone’s film, but the guns used throughout offer further insight into the depth of this connection. We witness the guns as identifiers of various roles in the film, as well as an escalation in how the guns of the film are used to kill. As the power of the guns increases so does the size of them until they are no longer even formally guns anymore, but cannon. From the gunslinger’s revolver, to the military's artillery each weapon plays a role in entangling the films primary plot with the war that the film is associated with.
But let’s start at the beginning, the guns are identifiers, the main characters are already defined for us by their titles: the Good, the Bad, & the Ugly. These titles imply a moral code that each of the characters follow, but as the film plays out this does not track with their behavior, the morality of the characters is muddy. The gun’s that each character carries allows us more insight into what might be meant by their respective titles. Blondie for instance carries a Colt 1851 Navy revolver, a common gunslinger’s weapon but also a tool of the military on both sides. The gun has no allegiance but to whoever is holding it, Blondie much in the same vein is only fleetingly tied to any particular group in the film. He betrays Tuco, assumes the identity of a Confederate for convenience, takes up with Angel Eye’s who is supposedly his polar opposite, re-teams up with Tuco, and aid’s a Union Captain in service of his own goals. The ubiquity of this particular revolver is represented in the actions of its primary bearer. At various points it’s used to kill Confederates, Union boys, outlaws, and innocents. Through the ubiquity of the Colt 1851 Navy, we understand the nature of violence is chaotic, our supposedly Good character is out for himself, only better than the Bad by nature of not murdering children. This representation of the gun stands in contrast to the façade of order constantly pushed by both armies throughout the film. We see troops marching constantly, a pretense of order undone by the chaos of death and destruction we see everywhere else.
Tuco demonstrates his complicated “Ugly” nature by piecing his primary revolver together from several different revolvers (though it’s still a Colt Navy just converted to fit cartridges), indicating the supposed distinction of his character from the more clearly labeled “good” and “bad”. On top of this, he is simultaneously robbing the shop that he’s getting the gun from, and as a parting gesture of goodwill leaving the shop owner he just robbed the rest of his whiskey as consolation. Tuco’s nature is that of complete chaos, Blondie may not be the principled hero we expect, but his actions are consistent with his goals as opposed to the fickleness of Tuco. Angel Eyes or "the Bad" carries a unique weapon, newer, and from a different manufacturer, a Remington 1858 New Army. This revolver has a distinctly more angular look that differentiates it from Blondie and Tuco’s weapons and aids Angel Eye’s malevolent persona. He also uses the same Colt as Blondie and Tuco to murder the father and son in his opening scene further calling into question what exactly the difference between these apparent moral opposites really is. On the surface, these guns at least are intended to appear period accurate, (though not all of them are) and to point to the conflict playing out in the background, as the conflict playing out in the foreground mirror’s the greed and waste the Civil War represents.
Leone’s use of the familiar American West makes for relatively straight forward analysis with a clear understanding of the associated historical context. The Good, the Bad, the Weird is trickier. Kim’s film does not take place in the midst of a war but in the beginnings and the aftermath of two different wars. Like The Good, the Bad, & the Ugly, The Good, the Bad, the Weird uses it’s weaponry to draw connections to war. Unlike Leone however, Kim is tackling a series of conflicts all interconnected and feeding into one another, the primary two being World Wars I and II, with a focus on the Japanese occupation of Korea, reflecting the film’s own national identity rather than Leone’s appropriation of the American setting.
The title character’s weapons are again worth noting here as signifiers, The Bad, who is fittingly Japanese, curiously carries a British Webley Mk IV which seems odd since South Korea is on good terms with Britain, but this choice will become clear later. Much more immediately legible however is The Good’s armament. He carries an entirely American loadout as befits his status as the film’s resident cowboy. Specifically, he carries a Smith & Wesson M1917 Revolver as well as a Marlin Model 1894 and an unidentifiable double-barreled shotgun - all deeply American weapons. The Good is not just proficient with these weapons as would befit a cowboy however, he goes far beyond that, displaying superhuman feats of skill, including a very kung-fu-esque sky dance via ropes as he effortlessly kills his foes. In this film the cowboy is a superhero, and yet, like Blondie, his politics and allegiances are arguably nonexistent, he’s a bounty hunter and his goal is money.
The Weird maintains his status as the most complicated title character, carrying dual Walther P38s, a common German sidearm. This already paints a curious picture as the Weird is treated as the primary protagonist that the viewer is meant to root for, and yet, is being associated with the primary Axis power and instigator of World War II. Further complicating things is how the Weird uses these weapons in the film, killing and robbing the Japanese military again in an apolitical (on the surface anyway) attempt to personally profit. This persona of the aloof bandit out for wealth is then flipped on its head when we learn of The Ugly’s past during the film’s finale. The Weird’s character is revealed to have a bloody past in Korea that he’s tried to escape by running away to Manchuria, a liminal space that has no strong national identity of its own. The Weird is masquerading as one of the outcasts that we see repeatedly throughout the film but his backstory ties him to a distinct national identity whereas the weaponry of the disparate groups reflects their statelessness and the confusion of different identities that the film is clearly wrestling with, that the Weird and the Bad’s weaponry split’s their national identity creates a similar effect. The entirety of The Good, the Bad, the Weird takes place in this sort of gray zone of Manchuria right before World War II. there are quite a few weapons that place us in the that time and place, but they are often scattered about without coalescing into a single unified identity save for one group.
The Japanese army that comes in during the final chase scene is armed with entirely Japanese weaponry; from the officer's Nambu Type 14 sidearm, to Arisaka service rifles, to the Type 11 machine gun, to the 75mm Type 94 Mountain Guns they bring in at the end to fire danger close on their own advancing troops. This being the most blatantly villainous nationality in the film is fittingly the one group that has a unified armament from their own country. The main title characters notwithstanding, the various gangs throughout the film carry weapons from every major World War II power, Russia’s Mosin Nagant service rifle, Germany’s Luftwaffe Mauser & Luger sidearms, and the Mauser & Karabiner service rifles, Britain’s Lanchester submachine gun, even America’s Colt Detective Special police pistol, and the classic Enfield service rifle make an appearance. But without being easily assigned to any one side of the conflict the weapons are jumbled amongst the various gangs roaming this wild eastern space. This reflects the confusion of these groups and makes them symbolic of the larger conflicts they are meant to represent.
The various gangs in the film are all primarily after the McGuffin that the Weird has stolen and are interested in it for their various personal goals. The McGuffin represents the catalyst for conflict, money. The rebels want it to fund their rebellion, The Japanese want it to keep it from the rebels, the Bad doesn’t really care about it at all but it’s how he’s convincing his gang to go after the Weird. All these groups find themselves in conflict with each other as much if not more than they find themselves in conflict with the Weird. This doesn’t fit neatly into our understanding of the World Wars, but it does map out the nature of the conflict, on a micro scale, the setting is the nowhere of Manchuria; a singular location with no other immediately relevant political meanings. The conflict brings in every known group in the region for one reason or another. It’s a miniature version of the greater conflicts.
Like The Good, the Bad, & the Ugly; The Good, the Bad, the Weird is using weaponry that fits the time period, but because of the conflicts the film is attempting to address, it must bring weaponry in that doesn’t necessarily match the setting. Like The Good, the Bad, & the Ugly; the title character’s appear to all be motivated by greed, until the finale when we learn fully that the characters are not nearly that simple.
The Bad, a Japanese mercenary is tracking the Weird, a Korean bandit. He's doing so not to acquire the McGuffin everyone else is after, but for revenge, this then clarifies the guns they carry and creates essentially split national identities for these characters, a theme the film approaches in several ways. The Bad is Britain, one of the Allied power’s responsible for taking revenge on Germany when they lost World War I by putting them into crippling debt with war reparations. The Weird is Germany, trying to escape an ugly past and find a way to become successful again, he dreams of a simpler life without the struggles and violence this one brings him. The Good is still America, still motivated by profit above all else, the only one not personally invested in the war but just there to see what he can get out of it. This is pre-World War II America after all, before thing’s got really serious for him. So then, the Bad is out for revenge and forces The Weird into a Mexican standoff with himself and the Good despite the Weird’s clear disinterest in further conflict. But there’s also the eastern identities to consider. Japan, Korea’s occupying force that has left wounds deep enough to keep the two at odds to this day, forces Korea into a fight, but there are two Korea’s here, pointing to the loss of a unified Korean identity and the splitting of the country a decade later.
While The Good, the Bad, & the Ugly draw’s a contrast between the façade of war, and the honest reality and intention of its tools through the use of its self-interested title character’s whose principles are transparently shallow. A depiction that contradicts war’s need to justify itself by claiming it’s in service to something greater. The Good, the Bad, the Weird uses the same signifying characters to delve deep into one of the world’s most tumultuous historical points. Kim is commenting on the crass nature of war as well but is also seeking to understand his own countries’ identity that was itself a casualty of the endless conflicts visited upon it. An essential part of these western stories of greed and lawlessness is that war is just a bigger, messier, less romantic version of the bandit and the cowboy standing off in the middle of a dusty main street ready to kill each other over the smallest imagined slight. War tells the big lies that the Western thrived on and the Revisionist Western now wholly rejects.