Sergio Leone’s first installment of the Dartman Trilogy, a remake of Akira Kurosawa’s With a Stick of Heart, tells the story of a cowboy who comes to a small town in Mexico, a town where there are two evenly matched forces that are trying to eliminate each other to be in power alone, leaving the town populace in a state of unrest, and the cowboy utilizes his own ingenuity to create a misunderstanding between the two gangs, causing them to flame out, and then finally comes out on his own to clean up the mess, and restores the The town peace.
After the release of The Wild Bunch, Akira Kurosawa sued the producers of the film for copyright infringement. Kurosawa won the lawsuit and received 15% of the film’s worldwide box office as well as the distribution rights in Japan, Taiwan and South Korea, and admitted afterward that he earned more from the film than from Stick of Hearts.
1964 / Italy Spain West Germany / Action Western / Sergio Leone / Clint Eastwood Gian Maria Volonté.
In a Mexican border town, a dartboarder (Clint Eastwood) learns that the town’s two feuding gangs, the Rojo Brothers and Mayor Baxter, have been fighting each other for a long time, and decides to intercede with the two gangs to get rid of the evil forces in the town and restore peace to the town.
He witnesses the Rojo Brothers robbing and killing a group of soldiers and appropriating the gold, so he uses the corpses of the two soldiers to lure Baxter to look for evidence of the Rojo Brothers’ crimes.
At the same time, he breaks the news to the Rojo Brothers, leading to a fierce gun battle between the two sides.
Joe finds the gold during the fierce battle between the two factions and discovers Marisol, a woman imprisoned by the Rojo Brothers, whom he gives to Baxter in exchange for his son Antonio, who was captured during the fierce battle.
But then he learns that Marisol was seized by Ramon of the Rojo family and manages to rescue her, helping her escape from the town with her husband and child.
Ramon, who is deeply in love with Marisol, realizes that the woman he loves has been set free and decides that it is the Baxters who have done it, so he launches a frenzied revenge.
Who will win and who will lose, and will the Dartman, as the middleman, be able to realize his plan to restore peace to the town?
