Entertaining Study Of Marxist Ideals

Rating: 7/10 (29 May 2005)

It's no secret but Sergio Leone was a supporter of Marxism . All his work has a socialist ideal running through it and A FISTFUL OF DYNAMITE is the most obvious example . Look at the opening sequence as Rod Stieger's is given a lift on the bourgeois coach . Oh what decadent pigs they are , the imperilist American , the priest spreading his opiate through the land , the arrogant philistines who look down their noses at the proletarian passenger who they view as a worthless parasite , but most of the all the sexually repressed woman who takes great joy in discussing her sexual conclusions of what these peasants get up to when the lights are turned off at night , I bet she has a few dark secrets . Of course you just know that revolutionary karma is on its way
I have to honest and say that despite recognising the philosophy of Leone I've never been much of a fan of his work , his films tend to be overblown and obvious with sometimes totally silly scenes and with the exception of ONCE UPON A TIME IN America none of them can be classed as masterworks of cinema but A FISTFUL OF DYNAMITE ( Who decided to call it DUCK YOU SUCKER ? ) is better than most even if it suffers from the directors usual faults in that it's over long and we get too many close ups . I really do wonder if Leone viewed editors as decadent reactionaries
What makes this movie better than most of Leone's movies is that the story while not exactly being groundbreaking is thoughtful and involving . A revolutionary comes across an IRA fugitive and enlists his help to overthrow the government . At least unlike American movies this Italian effort doesn't go out of it's way to make the noble misunderstood Irish bombmaker the focus of the story , he's there as a catalyst / plot device more than anything . Despite not having the most convincing Irish accent James Coburn does seem to have been hired as something more than as a hunky , macho action IRA hero unlike Richard Gere in THE JACKAL and Brad Pitt in THE DEVIL'S OWN . Rod Steiger is fairly convincing as the peasant revolutionary and it's rather scary that this is perhaps one of his last notable performances . The use of humour is genuinely amusing rather than silly and the movie contains a very memorable soundtrack . Come on I bet you were calling " SEAN SEAN SEAN " after seeing this
Apart from calling for socialist utopia the subtext of the movie features guilt and redemption with Sean's flash back sub story to the fore but I've always thought the most moving and intelligent part of the subtext is when a former revolutionary tells of the time when he was tortured into informing by the state " I thought I would never break under torture but I did .Nothing can be changed . The dead will remain dead . What am I supposed to do ? Kill myself ? I can still be of use to the cause " which is a fairly unique thing in a film since nearly all informers in movies don't need to be tortured in order to give out info while no one seems to feel any guilt at sticking in their former friends to their enemies