We leave "The Master Gunfighter" remembering very long, very pointless conversations in which the characters seemed to be referring to events in another film. Laughlin has moments, too, but he has no flair for timing or development or surprise. But Leone at least was the master of great momentsÑstretches of film that worked, even if they meant nothing. Watching it, we reflect that Leone was never too strong on plotting either (what actually happened in " The Good, the Bad and the Ugly" remains a matter of great controversy). The movie has ambitions to look like one of Sergio Leone's Italian WesternsÑit has the eerie music and the vast landscapes and the irritating habit of opening and closing scenes with zooms as dramatic as they're arbitrary. Then there's a title card "Three Years Later" and he decides to go BACK to the hacienda, for more compelling reasons. The movie opens, for example, with Laughlin leaving the California hacienda of his wife, for obscure reasons (and not only the reasons are obscure-I had to read the synopsis to figure out the woman was his wife). On the basis of the available evidence, I'd say the director and star, Tom Laughlin, began with a badly confused screenplay (one that never did clearly establish the characters and the main story line) and then shot so much film that he had to cut out key scenes in order to edit everything down to a reasonable playing time.
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