Without question, one of Leone's best (spoilers)

Rating: Null/10 (21 March 2006)

A Fistful of Dynamite (or Duck, You Sucker, or Once Upon a Time  The Revolution, or whatever title you want to use) doesn't get anywhere near the same amount of attention and praise that the Dollars trilogy, and Once Upon a Time in the West and Once Upon a Time in America have heaped upon them, but that doesn't stop it from being one of Leone's best films. In fact, I'd probably place it as his third best film, above each instalment in the Dollars trilogy and just below the two Once Upon a Time pictures.
I prefer A Fistful of Dynamite to the Dollars films because Dynamite has more substance and more emotion to it. Don't get me wrong, I'm a huge Leone fan and love the Dollars films to bits, but all in all they're just cracking entertainment (just, he says!). A Fistful of Dynamite, though, is cracking entertainment and moving as hell at the same time.
One of the things I love most about A Fistful of Dynamite is Leone's attitude to revolution. He sees right through the BS of it all. He knows it's a load of crap, that the motivations are about as pure as a lump of coal. He also knows that it's the poor people who end up suffering the most. In fact, there's a great speech that Juan (Rod Steiger), the peasant Mexican bandit, makes when he's talking to Sean (James Coburn), the Irish revolutionary who has a way with explosives. "I know what I'm talking about when I'm talking about revolutions. The people who read the books go to the people who can't read the books and the book people say, 'We need a change'. So the poor people make the change. Then the people who read the books they all sit around big polished tables and they talk and talk and talk and eat and eat and eat. But what has happened to the poor people? They're dead! That's your revolution." Of course, with Steiger's delivery, the scene is even more powerful.
But as that piece of dialogue proves, the film's cynical as hell. But I think history has proved Leone's attitude to be spot on. You get rid of one corrupt regime and another one is established in its place, one that is often worse. Therefore Leone suggests that it's best to stay out of things.
This is Juan's attitude at the start of the film. He wants no part of revolution or politics. He wants to keep his head down and take whatever money he can with his group of bandits, all of whom are family members (Juan boasts of all of his children having different mothers). But slowly he's drawn into things. First he encounters Sean, who he thinks he can use to help him blow his way into a bank. And then, when he finally does hit the bank, there's no money inside  Sean has declined to tell him that the money was moved and that there are only political prisoners inside. Therefore Juan becomes an unwitting hero of the revolution. But then as Sean and Juan slowly become friends, Juan helps his Irish friend attack the government troops. This then leads to Juan's entire family being murdered in the caves they hide in. And it really is quite a powerful scene when Juan sees the aftermath. Before this scene he's quite a comic character. He dreams of robbing banks, he slaps his children playfully around the chops, he looks to god for inspiration and he even rapes wealthy women with his over-sized genitalia ("That's pretty good, huh?" and "You pass out now you miss the best part"). But after his family are killed he's left completely bereft  Steiger really does look heartbroken; his performance is extraordinary  and he rips his cross from his neck. As he says earlier on, "My country is me and my family."
After this, Sean and Juan become even closer. Sean realises that he's partly responsible for what's happened to Juan and he slowly loses his revolutionary spirit. Towards the end he even says that he doesn't believe in revolutions any more; he only believes in dynamite. And the final scene is extremely powerful. Sean and Juan meet on the battlefield and Sean gets shot in the back by the General who killed Juan's family. Juan then unloads with a machine gun, shooting the man long after he's dead. Then Juan talks to his injured friend, "You leave me now, you know, what the f*** is going to happen to me?" And then at the end of their conversation, Sean gives Juan his cross back, "Oh, my friend, I did give you a royal screwing." But Juan shakes his head. He was glad they became friends. Beautiful stuff. And then when Juan goes off to get help, we get a final flashback to Sean's past (as in most of Leone's films, flashbacks occur frequently throughout the film) and Sean blows himself up, leaving Juan completely alone. "What about me?" he thinks; the last spoken words. And then 'Duck, You Sucker', shoots onto the screen. But as Christopher Frayling says in his biography of Leone, and in the commentary on the DVD, a more accurate title is 'Keep Your Head Down'. If Juan hadn't of got involved, none of this would have happened. The film's much more than just a spaghetti western.