Clint Eastwood not please the critics, one writing that "no other performance of his is quite so 'un-Clintlike'." Two months later Eastwood began work on the third "Dollars" film, "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly", again playing the mysterious Man with No Name. Lee Van Cleef returned as a ruthless fortune seeker, with Eli Wallach portraying the cunning Mexican bandit Tuco Ramirez. The storyline involved the search for a cache of Confederate gold buried in a cemetery. During the filming of a scene in which a bridge was blown up, Eastwood urged Wallach to retreat to a hilltop. "I know about
The Good, the Bad, the Weird times, but this isn’t really a movie where plot is paramount. Everything boils down to the action, and what that action means". The "New York Post" gave it a four star rating out of five stating that "The Good, the Bad, the Weird may owe a lot to other films but it is always fresh and never boring". "Empire" magazine gave it a three star rating out of five commenting that "A tangled narrative and damp -squib ending detract from an otherwise joyous Spaghetti Eastern Western." "Time Out" critic Tom Huddlestone stated that "This is filmmaking as rodeo ride: bruising