Clint Eastwood is a renowned actor and filmmaker, known for his prolific and efficient working style. He has won two Oscars for his directing work, but the legend started as an actor and became a Western icon. One of his most popular Westerns is the third movie in his Dollars trilogy, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.
Eastwood’s character as the Man with No Name became extremely popular, and so did Sergio Leone’s morally grey style. The movie has far-reaching influences, with one of the most popular ones being Kim Jee-woon’s The Good, the Bad, the Weird, which starred Lee Byung-hun, known for his work on Squid Game.
A Clint Eastwood movie inspired Squid Game star’s ‘Oriental Western’
Clint Eastwood is a legend like no other. The veteran actor has been active since the ‘50s and directed his last movie in the previous year, at the age of 94. He has won two Oscars for directing and has been nominated multiple times. However, he is best known to the American public as the Man with No Name in Sergio Leone’s Dollars trilogy.
Eastwood’s character was unlike any other Western hero, who was usually the righteous do-gooder of every story. He was grey, and though he was ‘the Good’ in Sergio Leone’s The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, that was only relative. The final movie in the trilogy was Leone’s finest, with plenty of style and violence.
The movie has been quite influential, with its style and story reaching as far as Korea. The film The Good, the Bad, the Weird, starring Song Kang-Ho, Jung Woo-sung, and Squid Games’ Lee Byung-hun, was an obvious reference to Clint Eastwood’s film. The director, Kim Jee-woon, said in an interview with Indie London,
When I saw Sergio Leone’s films for the first time, I was amazed at how unconventional they were, and it gave me a fresh perspective. That’s what I wanted to try and give The Good, The Bad, The Weird… that unconventional feeling…Another thing that’s fresh about Sergio Leone’s Dollars trilogy was that everyone was a bad guy – even the main character. For me, it was so much more realistic.
Clint Eastwood’s portrayal of the character as a slick and witty bounty hunter with questionable ethics has influenced many since its release, with Kim Jee-woon’s movie being only one of them.
Squid Game star from The Good, the Bad, the Weird spoke about playing a bad guy for the first time
Clint Eastwood was in horror movies of questionable quality before he got his breakthrough with Rawhide, a Western TV show where he played the righteous hero. However, when he began his collaboration with Sergio Leone, he got a morally grey character that was quite different from what he had done before.
Actor Lee Byung-hun is best known to the global audience as the antagonistic Hwang In-Ho in Squid Game. However, he was not such a villainous character before and was actually known for his romantic and positive roles. He first played a bad guy in Kim Jee-woon’s Sergio Leone-inspired ‘Oriental Western’, The Good, the Bad, the Weird.
Byung-hun was reportedly nervous before taking on ‘the Bad’ in the movie, as it was his first time. He said to Eastern Kicks,
Some of my Japanese fans were worried about that, because I’ve never done it before. They’ve been watching me play like good guys, nice, romantic, and so on. They were worried just before the screening, but luckily, they were really satisfied with what they saw.
Donning a black leather jacket and oozing swagger, Lee Byung-hun killed it as ‘the Bad’ in the movie, though his character was not that similar to Clint Eastwood’s.
The Good, the Bad, the Weird is available to stream on AMC+.
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