"Listen, it takes one bandito to know another."

Rating: 7/10 (1 October 2018)

Well, I finally got around to this movie, and I'm glad I did, but in the end I was left unimpressed. It's a fairly long and meandering ramble concerning displaced IRA revolutionary John Mallory (James Coburn), and an unwilling Mexican one named Juan Miranda (Rod Steiger). The title of the picture is referenced a number of times, usually in connection with Mallory advising his erstwhile partner that something was about to blow up. It may be I lost my focus a few times because the movie didn't hold my interest much, even with Steiger and Coburn in the lead roles. The two Johnny's never really seemed that charismatic in a story that brings them together as partners though much of the time they act individually. I am in fact a fan of Leone's Dollars trilogy, but for me this didn't measure up. Maybe it was the political context, as I prefer the kind of antagonists that are destined to reconcile matters in a final one on one showdown. This one closed with Steiger's character looking somewhat puzzled, and for that I couldn't blame him.