The Man With No Name (Clint Eastwood) and Tuco (Eli Wallach) admire each other professionally but dislike each other personally. Encountering a group of dying soldiers, Tuco learns the location of the graveyard where a Confederate treasure is buried, while the Man With No Name learns the identity of the exact grave. Joined by mercenary drifter Sentenza (Lee Van Cleef), they cross the desert, each of the desperadoes knowing part of the secret and each focusing his squinty eyes on the $200,000 bounty.

“An improbable masterpiece: a bizarre mixture of grandly operatic visuals, grim brutality and sordid violence that keeps wrenching you from one extreme to the other.” —Michael Wilmington, Chicago Tribune