Desconstruction With Explosives

Rating: 9/10 (17 August 2019)

Mexican bandit Rod Steiger and his family meet ex-IRA explosives expert James Coburn when he blows up their railroad car, and falls in love. Why not rob a bank? Coburn agrees, but has more in mind. He radicalizes Steiger, makes him a hero to the followers of Pancho Villa as some grand joke.
It's one of Sergio Leon's big, sprawling spaghetti westerns, in which he deconstructs more of the myths of the Old West, and tackles the fashionable revolutionary movements of the 1960s. Coburn may read Bakunin, but he is haunted by the violence of the Easter Rebellion. Steiger is driven by the desire for wealth, but he doesn't want to destroy the world he has grown up in, he wants to be part of it. Both men are adored by the Mexican revolutionaries, but Romolo Valli knows Coburn of old, and knows him for what he is. In the end, they are not creating a better world for people. They are only creating destruction.