A descending spiral of violence [SPOILERS]

Rating: Null/10 (24 February 2004)

As other reviewers have noted this is a great Leone film. For too long it has been in the shadow of the 'Dollars' Westerns. With some restored footage the story now makes more sense and the mood of the piece has become clearer.
The film appears to start as broad comedy, with the robbery of a luxurious stagecoach, but there are dark undertones even here. As the passengers describe Juan (Rod Steiger) as an animal they stuff their mouths with rich food and wine (in wonderfully revolting extreme close-up), revealing their own base natures. Soon the passengers (including a Catholic Bishop) are stripped of all symbols of their status and dumped naked into a pig pen.
A massive explosion announces the arrival of Sean (James Coburn). Juan sees Sean as a magician, a partner sent by Providence to help him achieve his life's ambition: to rob the Banco Nacional at Mesa Verde. Sean won't join forces with a 'chicken thief'. A tit-for-tat battle of explosives and guns again seems light-hearted. Eventually Sean wearily agrees to help Juan 'get inside' the bank. What Juan doesn't know is that the bank is now a prison. He finds no money but frees plenty of political prisoners and becomes a 'great, grand, glorious hero' of the Revolution. From being a happy-go-lucky bandit Juan is now committed politically.
It's at this point that the mood of the film changes. We have seen some evidence of the Revolution in Mesa Verde: martial law and a small execution squad. As the film progresses the Revolution becomes an impersonal killing machine: Juan's children are murdered; Sean refers to a body of soldiers he intends to kill as 'a few uniforms', their individual identity is lost; a Revolutionary leader betrays his people who are executed in their dozens; towards the end of the film thousands are being slaughtered in huge pits by soldiers using machine-guns and rifles. The amusing earlier scenes are a distant memory.
It is this change of mood that makes the film I know as 'A Fistful of Dynamite' so powerful. The flashbacks in which Sean remembers his younger self enjoying life with a good friend and a beautiful girl extend the themes of disillusion and betrayal that are played out in detail in the main story.

At the end Juan is left totally alone, his children are dead, his closest friend is dead, all he has left is a life of mourning and regrets. This is a bleak ending to a very pessimistic view of the corruption and loss of ideals, and the unbreakable cycle of brutality that always seems to follow when we listen to 'the people who read the books'.