I decided to pop this in tonight and really enjoy it. However, there is one thing that I have always wondered about and hope maybe some of you can she some light on it.

How did Angel Eyes get to such a high ranking at the POW camp where Tuco gets interrogated? It's obvious he has a history there as a rough individual, but I was under the impression he was just a mercenary for hire. Did he assume the identity of someone else, or was he always a soldier for the Union that did mercenary work on the side? Just curious, thanks!

...no offense but...it's totally irrelevant whatever he was before. He is what he is. He's a bad guy in the army. Take it for what it is.

I thought he maybe called in some favors he had from some army folks who he did "jobs" for before, he had connections like a snake able to go anywhere. I always liked how each of the 3 showed different sides like when Angel Eyes seemed like a good guy when he talks to the lady in the carriage about people not always hanging.

It doesn't affect the movie in any way, but I like explanations for certain things in movies. My question is whether he was always in the army, or if he just conjured up a fake identity to get in and satisfy his sadistic needs until he came across someone with knowledge about Carson.

I don't have it at hand, the DVD is somewhere in box here (moving around all these movies and film equipment from school is a bitch when you're moving apartments) but I don't think the movie at all hinted anything. He just is what he is. Maybe he's just a Union Sergeant who's bad and just wants the prize.

Just learned this from Wikipedia but:

Turns out the guy (bounty hunter who loses his arm by a shot to the arm) that gets killed by Tuco who was taking a bath. And also famously used as one of the quiet gunman in the intro to (what I consider the BEST western ever) Once Upon A Time In The West....

Did not know that. Wow.

I've read that Angel Eye's Union sergeant is a fake identity.

What's even creepier is that, while he was being rushed to the hospital, Sergio Leone is said to have exclaimed "get the costume! We need the costume!" That's pretty cold if it's true.

Holy crap. Wow. I'm not saying it couldn't have happened...but...I COULD see Leone doing it. He was an eccentric fellow at times.

So I guess he killed the real one and weaseled his way into the position. In those days there were no true identity papers, DNA, or military record files. You could just show up, say you were someone, and get away with it. Makes sense, though a confrontation he has with a man who's a "higher-up" suggests to me that this might be his day job.

The need to explain things that don't need to be explained in Leone's ahistorical somewhat surreal universe is what led to the horrible "restoration" of THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY a few years ago. All those added scenes with old men dubbing the voices of Blondie and Tuco and an impostor doing the voice of Angel Eyes just completely ruined the rhythm of the movie for me.

Why did we need to see Tuco recruiting those three hapless thugs who joined him to stalk Blondie in the hotel during the siege of the town? Can't we just accept that offscreen Tuco rounded up some criminal buddies to help him out? He's been a professional criminal since childhood, so we can safely assume he's got buddies in the trade he can call on for favors from time to time (and use them to draw Blondie's fire while he comes in through the window--"There are two kinds of people, my friend...").

I don't recall the other "restored" scenes but they were equally unnecessary.

What's next? A prequel to ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST explaining why Jack Elam, Woody Strode and Al Mulock were at the train station "shy one horse" waiting for Bronson? Or how McBain met Claudia Cardinale? Or what Bronson's been doing in the years since his childhood flashback? (They can use scenes from his numerous other westerns--APACHE, VERA CRUZ, JUBAL, RUN OF THE ARROW, THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN, A THUNDER OF DRUMS, FOUR FOR TEXAS, etc.)

One of them certainly cleared up a question I always had.

At the end when Tuco asks Blondie when he unloaded Tuco's gun, Blondie says "Last night". I always had to ask, "What night?" The two had only been reunited just hours earlier. But in the restored cut, there's a night-time shot of transition (During the back & forth cannon fire) which shows exactly how long Blondie and Tuco have been together. Without that minor shot, the viewer always seems to believe that the civil war battle takes place in just one day.

I figured it's a wartime thing where the army will take anyone who will sign up and then rapidly promotes anyone with a brain and some leadership skills while the war is going on. Angel Eyes is smart and has some leadership skill, therefore almost instant promotion.

For example, in real life, Ulysses S. Grant went from a disgraced Army Captain who was forced to resign to avoid being court-martialed during the peacetime just before the Civil War to, once the war started, being easily able to rejoin the Army and rapidly rising up the ranks to become the main Union General in only about 3 years. Wartime is very different than peacetime in the armed forces.