Il était une fois... la révolution

A FISTFUL OF DYNAMITE aka DUCK YOU SUCKER (5 outta 5 stars)

I think this is Sergio Leone's third greatest movie... right after Once Upon a Time in the West and The Good, The Bad and the Ugly. Most Leone fans rank this film a lot lower... but I think that's because they are only familiar with the shortened two hour version. Also, for the record, I absolutely loathe the re-titling... A Fistful of Dynamite... how lame! At least the original Leone title, Duck You Sucker was... distinctive. Even the French title (translation: Once Upon a Time... The Revolution) is kinda classy. But AFOD??? Gimme a break! This movie has absolutely nothing to do with A Fistful of Dollars so why even try to make the comparison?

Anyway, I loved this movie when I first saw it in the theatre in 1972 (age 12). I am pretty sure that what we saw at the time was the lengthy, uncut version... and I don't remember being bored at all. (The most common complaint about this movie is that it is slow and boring... heck, that's the most common complaint about EVERY Leone movie.) Rod Steiger and James Coburn play Sean and Juan, respectively a poor Mexican bandit and a fugitive Irish terrorist... who meet up in Mexico and become involved (against their wills) with revolutionary warfare in that struggling country. The movie is exciting, funny, dramatic, suspenseful and, well, just plain brilliant. This is Ennio Morricone's greatest film score and the way it meshes with Leone's visuals is simply amazing... particularly in my favourite scene... the bank heist. Juan and his young sons break into the Bank of Mexico, shoot it out with the guards and go from door to door, searching for gold and finding only political prisoners, until finally... oh, I can't give it away! See it for yourself. This is a movie filled with classic scenes: Coburn's arrival on the "motorsickle" and his confrontation with Steiger's gang... Steiger and Coburn with their machine guns... Steiger's final act of vengeance (which is severely chopped to bits in the short version... robbing it of its vicious power). Its been said that Steiger's comical accent is stereotypical and insulting... but I say NO! He is playing one of the richest and most complex characters of his career... with some of his greatest speeches ("And what happens to the poor people? They are DEAD!"). Not to slight James Coburn, who also does a fantastic job, but Steiger is the star of this one.

Coming off the triumphs of his "Man With No Name" series and his frustrations with the cutting of "The Good, The Bad & The Ugly" and "Once Upon a Time in the West," Sergio Leone directed the big budget, epic western, originally titled, "Once Upon a Time in the Revolution". Since "...West" had been released by Paramount and United Artists was releasing "...Revolution," some executive decide the rename the movie "Duck! You Sucker!" after the phrase Sean (James Coburn) uses repeatedly before blowing someone or something up with dynamite. Likely the same executive choose an advertising campaign reminiscent of "The Good, The Bad & The Ugly," creating caricatures of Sean and Juan (Rod Steiger) adding the caption "...the master of adventure, Sergio Leone". Well, I doubt many theater audiences knew who Sergio Leone was, since he was yet to be recognized as a directoral genius the equal of John Ford or Howard Hawks. Worse, the advertising implied "Duck! You Sucker! was a laugh romp, a parody of Leone's early masterpieces. This impression was made even worse when the film failed to perform. In any event, "A Fistfull of Dyanmite" was a dismal failure at the box office and Leone never made another big budget western drama.It's too bad, because "A Fistfull of Dynamite" is Leone's trueist work, his most accurate vision of life, politics and revolution. Neither Rod Steiger nor James Coburn were strongly associated with westerns, even though both played strong roles in earlier films (Steiger in "Run of the Arrow" and "Jubal," Coburn in "The Magnificent Seven" and "Ride Lonesome". Worse, Steiger's Juan looked like something of a buffoon and the movies villains were bland and underdeveloped. However, I believe this was Leone's intention: corrupt politicians and Prussian officers are pretty well interchangeable. Kill one and another pops up. This isn't a very satisfying truth, but it is truth, nonetheless. Juan is a peasant, a bandit with a large family of bandits. Sean is a Irish Republican Army terrorist, an explosives expert. In Leone's world, or at least in all his films, there are only two types of people: predators and victims. His major characters are all predators. The only thing that distinguishes his protagonists from his antagonists is that his antagonists start with a large body count and his protagonists usually spare the innocent. That works with a taut enough storyline, but "...Dynamite" covers large areas of real estate and the goal is never clear. Juan didn't plan to become a hero of the revolution, and that is small payment for his losses. When one looks at history, the rewards of revolution and warfare are never worth the sacrifices, for just as we kill one bastard, another takes his place.

I think "A Fistfull of Dynamite" largely reflects Leone's fate as well. Leone proved he was the greatest western director in less than four years with only four major films. Yet, he was hardly appreciated during his short life and only a few films after his magnificent achievement. "A Fistfull of Dynamite" is also Leone's saddest movie. A beautiful, big budget metaphor for a man's talent wasted by underappreciate film executive and smug, self-serving critics.

Coburn should have won an "Oscar" for "Dynamite." With the exception of some tabletop model trains, the effects are convincing and exciting. The color cinematography is phenomenal, clearly the equal of "Once Upon a Time in the West. The sound and music (by Ennio Morricone) is phenomenal, as usual. While not as satisfying as Leone's best films, "A Fistfull of Dynamite" is an exemplary film. I give it a "9".

Here is a tragedy -- a great film doomed by a terrible title.

I saw this movie as "Duck, You Sucker" in the theater in 1972 or '73. I still have images and haunting music burned in my brain from it. It has, for one thing, one of the biggest real explosions ever filmed, an absolutely awesome blast using real high explosives that makes today's fiery spectacles pale. I think the whole production company was stunned by it, certainly Sergio Leone was, because he gives it the full treatment: multiple cameras and angles, wide shots, lots of screen time giving us lots of looks. And it's worth it. If you're not a war veteran, you've never seen anything like this.

But this film is much more than its fx. It's a deep, moving story told on the grand scale, with Oscar-class cinematography. It is both a major outdoor adventure and a small, intimate story. It has some of the quirkiest scenes, blackest humor and darkest betrayals, too.

Don't look for it on TV, unless Turner Classic Movies shows it "uncut." It was horribly mutilated in editing for television, and therefore unpopular and rarely shown. Get the original theatrical version, and watch it undisturbed. A party atmosphere would ruin it for you.

It's on my top-20 all time list!

Excellent action film with Steiger over-the-top but Coburn right on the money as bandit/revolutionaries in Mexico. More gunfire and explosions and less balmy confrontations than in other Leone pics. I'm stuck on a second viewing by how much of a "70s" film this is, and how much real cinematic value and interesting ideas Leone has put into the film despite its basic action-film plotline. Rumors say Malcolm MacDowell was the original lead -- very intriguing possibility. The look on Steiger's face after he finds out he's risked his life to rescue a bunch of dirty prisoners is priceless.

With Fistful of Dyanmite (a.k.a. 'Duck, You Sucker', a.k.a. 'Once Upon a Time in the Revolution', the second part of a 'trilogy'), legendary Sergio Leone puts together something experimental, even more so than the other films in his catalog. Here he now deals with war, but he still has the crime elements of his 'dollars' films; it somehow makes a very clear cut balance between bits of comedy within the tragedy worked in the story; it isn't very brutal, but it is graphic in the genre sense of the time. It's also one of his best films, if you happen to see it within its full running time (like most of Leone's films, this suffered drastic cuts in American versions, reducing critical character points and other Leone surprises).

A Leone film, however, can only be as strong as the leads pushing it up, as in the dozens and dozens of westerns and other films that inspired Leone. Here he uses two character actors (for the most part of their careers), but indeed very good and astute ones at playing their parts. Rod Steiger, who has been in classic films like On the Waterfront and The Pawnbroker, here is slightly like a maturer version of Tuco from The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: he's still a bandit, with pillaging and beating and raping his way across the countryside, but he's also got a family to look after, who within his anti-hero heart are the most important things to him. Steiger's Juan is usually either surprised, quietly delighted, or agitated off to certain degrees. He plays this for all it's worth, but he also finds the best notes in the moments when he brings out laughs, and in the more sorrowful moments later on in the film.

There's also James Coburn, veteran of many, many films, given one of the great themes of any character in a Leone film by composer Ennio Morricone (there's some sort of instrument or distortion of one in his theme that calls for complete, unusual attention on the viewer). Coburn's Sean (err, John, depending) is a character with some ghosts, perhaps, in his past, and who unlike Juan is more interested in 'other' interests. Although Juan tries not to notice it until the sequence at Mesa Verde (which I won't reveal), Sean has been through a revolution in Ireland, and understand more or less what happens with it. He brings in Juan, after a rather strange yet hilarious encounter, into his web of revolutionary fighters, which doesn't go over to well with him at first. As their story unravels, Coburn still plays it like a pro, being the straight character to Steiger's very theatrical-like performance. He doesn't quite have the mystery an Eastwood or Bronson had in the other Leone films, but he does carry a certain quality about him that puts him in a needed place in the Leone cannon.

Speaking of which, one must not over-look how complex a film like this is in some ways. Leone was not originally the director (it went through the hands of Peter Bogdanovich and Sam Peckinpah before coming to him, coincidentally the opening scene with Juan is a cool homage to the Wild Bunch opening). Yet somehow he puts his stamp, and wonderful mark, on Fistful of Dynamite. This time more history is worked into the film- unlike the civil war acting like a harsh backdrop to the more 'fun' elements of the adventure in The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, the war in this film affects the main character, and adds a serious tone to an otherwise standard genre picture.

The Steiger character, along with the audience, gets a look at a massive amount of death, or rather the images of the dead: a tower filled with soldiers blown at night, the powerful pans and camera moves across the bodies, real combat, and the suggestions of what goes into the revolution. But its not just the violence of battles that get into the film, its also the personal attitudes during the revolution- the bourgeois vs the peasants (one of Leone's masterstrokes at close-ups in montage is displayed when Juan is on the train with the near monstrous American wealthy early in the film). Leone manages to work in various and cinematic explosions, in-depth or testing close-ups, and sweeping long shots of soldiers, landscapes, and struggle.

Coming back to Ennio Morricone's score- this time, Morricone experiments with some styles of his talents. As when Leone uses a funny, almost cartoon-like, image above Sean from Juans' eyes of a 'Banco' sign (akin the a 'dollar' sign above cartoon characters), Morricone adds a church organ and choir to go along with it. There are also the uses of themes throughout the film, as in Leone's other films, that act like striking, beautiful calling cards. The opening theme is pounding; Sean's flashbacks are given the sumptuous qualities that go with the best (and worst) nostalgia; the scenes with action and suspense, though almost a little standard, still work far better than many standard score of today.

Fistful of Dynamite is entertainment on an epic scale, with a broader and somewhat deeper sub-text, and it comes out with flying colors. Some may not take to it; it could be argued that Steiger, much like Eli Wallach, isn't very convincing as a Mexican bandit, or that the shifting in tones is a little much, even conventional in a weird sense. But it's hard to argue the sense of control that Leone has over his environment in the film, the assuredness of style, and that at the least the parts are greater than the whole. For me, it's a film I've seen twice in one week (once to soak in and get more of the enjoyment, the second time to get even more out of it, and to notice the visual details), and I hope it gets better the next time around.