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 and the Ugly critics as more defined by his actions than his words. All three characters can be seen as anti-heroes killing for their personal gain. Leone also employed stylistic trick shooting, such as Blondie shooting the hat off a person's head and severing a hangman's noose with a well-placed shot, in many of its iconic shootouts. "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly" opened in Italy on 23 December 1966, and grossed $6.3 million at that time. In the United States, "A Fistful of Dollars" was released 18 January 1967 (28 months after its initial Italian release); "For a Few Dollars More"