Country: Italy
Genre: Spaghetti Western
Director: Sergio Leone
Year: 1971
Rating: 
WORTH A LOOK
Duck You Sucker!, also known as A Fistful of Dynamite, was Sergio Leone’s last spaghetti western. Like all of Leone’s spaghetti westerns, it’s a mock epic, which means a long running time with not a whole lot of plot.
What that means is that Leone loves to hold a moment or prolong a sequence in order to squeeze out every last drop of emotion or suspense. He can go to such ridiculous lengths that it can actually be funny sometimes. The amusement quotient is heightened by Ennio Morricone’s non-idiomatic score, which is a cross between Burt Bacharach 60’s pop orchestration and The Good, The Bad & The Ugly’s cartoony themes. When you add the fact that the Mexican bandit Juan Miranda is played by Rod Steiger, the whole thing is impossible to take seriously.
Not that Leone wants you to. On one level, Duck You Sucker! is a buddy comedy. When we first meet Juan Miranda, he hitches a ride on a luxury stagecoach. The passengers talk about him like he’s not even there, comparing him to an animal while Leone’s camera focuses on their mouths while they chew their food like so many cows chewing their cuds.
After Juan’s family finishes robbing the stagecoach, they have a run-in with John H. Mallory (James Coburn), an IRA soldier in exile who’s blasting the hillsides looking for silver.
Juan has the bright idea of enlisting John to help rob the richest bank in Mexico and disables John’s motorcyle to pursuade him. Thus the first shot is fired in a mini-war between Juan and John as each takes turns tricking and screwing over the other. Before you know it, they’ve become friends/enemies drawn into the ongoing Mexican Revolution.
Despite the essentially comic tone of Duck You Sucker!, the body count would put the average Sylvester Stallone movie to shame. There are a number of massacres in the picture, and a couple of pretty dandy explosions involving a bridge and a train respectively.
If you decide to rent or buy Duck You Sucker!, expect to be somewhat amused. However, I will caution you that the pacing will seem soporific to modern audiences. It even taxed my patience.
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