Duck, You Sucker

1971 spaghetti western

Rating: 16/20

Plot: Juan, a bandito, meets Sean, an Irish revolutionary/terrorist soon after he and his family rob a stagecoach. Sean demonstrates his expertise in explosives and intrigues Juan who tries to get his new friend to go along with him to Mesa Verde to help him fulfill his dream of robbing a bank there. Once Juan arrives, however, he finds himself in the middle of the revolution. Oh, snap! To make matters worse, Juan doesn't even know Sean's real name and keeps referring to him as John. Will this threaten their friendship/partnership or will they make it to Brokeback Mountain and go through with their plan of making holes and going in them? Or something.

Long, seemingly meandering but highly undervalued Leone epic. I love Leone's habit of stretching moments, those times when the camera just lingers on a subtly changing expression or distant haze or the tip of a pistol or an approaching train. Sure, it makes the movie twice as long, but so much of the mood would be lost. Great acting in this, both the comic Rod Steiger and the more straight man role of James Coburn. Also notable despite not having a single spoken word in the entire movie is the guy playing Colonel Gunter Reza in a Kinski-esque performance. Grand explosions, epic shoot-outs, and a ridiculous body count. Good, good story telling. I did think Morricone's score was a little uneven, maybe a bit too weird at times. I'm also not sure what I think of the flashbacks. The title alone maes up for everything wrong with the movie though. Great stuff.