Class Envy Crapola with Really Bad Music

Rating: 1/10 (24 June 2018)

It's always funny and ironic when a big budget film centers on another country's revolution which would lead to big or small budget movies with beloved high paid movie stars never being allowed to be made there. Still, there is always that "progressive" 6th grade mentality when dealing with perfect yet scruffy rebels verses the shiny yet formidable capitalists... Capitalism is, by the way, what makes Hollywood run; even imported stuff like this... There's no art without money...
That aside, Duck, You Sucker is an uncomfortable viewing with two great actors, Rod Steiger and James Coburn, both who can go wonderfully over-the-top but here trying for the Clint Eastwood/Charles Bronson less-is-more style that worked previously under director Sergio Leone's artful direction. But here it seems awkward and restrained.
The opening sequence in a stagecoach full of society people who are way too obvious and conceited to be anything more than representations of why we should back the seemingly humble revolutionaries, forcing us to pity the initially quiet and meet Steiger's Juan, until he shows his true colors that in any other movie would be that of a likeable villain. Leaving Duck, You Sucker with no real antagonists, just antagonistic and cliche stereotypes of people not nearly as rich as the Hollywood and Manhattan elites.
The soundtrack has been panned in every review, and that is should. "Shaaaaaaaaaaw Sha Shaaaaaaaw" is sung throughout and almost seems like a practical joke within an otherwise grungy motif where a more edgy score is needed, and would fit. But the biggest problem with this class-envy "War Western" is it takes too much time to tell a story that could easily fit under an hour and a half.
This movie is just plain bad. Liberalism is a part of most Hollywood movies even dating back to the 1930's but when that aspect is preachy and overdone, it might as well be propaganda or promotion for a, as mentioned in the beginning, world where art would not be allowed.