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Rating: 6/10 (18 March 2020)

Sergio Leone is a giant went it come to westerns but he only directed seven films. Three of which I have watched over and over throughout my lifetime. They were the ones with Clint Eastwood.
A Fistful of Dynamite was released in 1971. It was his only movie he made in the 70s. His next release and final film would be the gangster movie, Once Upon a Time in America.
This movie in a sense is a bridge from his spaghetti westerns to the flawed gangster epic he made in the 1984.
The movie opens with crude amoral Mexican bandit Juan Miranda (Rod Steiger) robbing wealthy passengers on a train and raping a woman which is done in a slightly comedic style. Once Upon a Time in America features one of the most disturbing rape scenes of 1980s cinema.
Set in 1913 with Mexico in the midst of revolution. Juan cares little about politics, he wants to rob for money. When he meets laconic but haunted IRA explosive expert John Mallory (James Coburn.) Juan seizes a chance to rob a bank.
However the bank is being used as a prison and Juan inadvertently ends up being a hero of the revolution as hundreds of political prisoners are freed.
A Fistful of Dynamite is an overblown and erratic Zapata western. It is an uneven film which lurches from nasty violence to joviality to a darker view of political revolutions.