The Spaghetti Western Masterpiece No One Ever Mentions, Stream Without Netflix
Sergio Leone is generally credited with creating the popular spaghetti Western, usually with Clint Eastwood in the title role. Eastwood isn’t in what many consider to be the greatest of Leone’s Western films, but James Coburn and Rod Steiger are. A Fistful of Dynamite is a great film of epic proportions with a story set in Mexico instead of the United States.
Set During The Mexican Revolution
A Fistful of Dynamite is about a former Irish Republican Army explosives expert named John Mallory, played by Coburn. He’s in Mexico while on the run from his pursuers in Ireland for alleged crimes committed there. He also has a very distinct skill set that makes him highly useful for those engaged in the Mexican Revolution during the 1910s.
Mallory has a chance meeting with Juan Miranda, who is played by the always excellent Rod Steiger. Miranda is a Mexican outlaw who doesn’t care about revolutions and instead is looking for the next big score with Mallory’s help, which usually means robbing a bank and blowing the door off of its vault. The duo winds up fighting on the side of the revolutionaries and achieves hero status without intending to do so.
The film’s antagonist is Col. Gunther Reza, who relishes opportunities to corner and kill revolutionaries. Among the revolutionaries Reza and his army kill are Miranda’s children and father, which sends him into a vengeful rage. He gets caught, and it’s up to Mallory to save him from a sure death in A Fistful of Dynamite.
A Creative Filming Technique
The 1971 film was directed by Leone, who co-wrote the script with Sergio Donati and Luciano Vincenzoni. Master dialogue director Mickey Knox takes care of the dubbing that overcomes the Tower of Babel approach Leone often used, which allowed actors to speak lines in their native languages no matter where the filming occurred as Knox turns each actor’s natively spoken words into the appropriate language.
The filming technique earns a mention in Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon A Time In Hollywood.
Leone uses flashbacks to inform audiences of Mallory’s past exploits in Ireland. The flashbacks include a former love he had and the tragedy that took her from him, which led him down the path to becoming a revolutionary outlaw in Ireland and again in Mexico. Leone also uses many of his classic filming techniques, including wide panoramic shots of gorgeous landscapes and extreme closeups of individual actors during dramatic scenes.
An Amazing Score From A Legendary Composer
A Fistful of Dynamite also goes by the alternate title of Duck You Sucker, which is a line uttered by Mallory at one point in the film. It’s the middle film of a trilogy that includes Once Upon a Time in the West and Once Upon a Time in America. It also features a film score created by the exceptional composer Ennio Morricone.
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REVIEW SCORE
The movie is the last Western Leone made and is considered his best by many critics. It earns a 92 percent approval rating among critics on Rotten Tomatoes, 77 percent on Metacritic, and 7.6/10 on IMDb. More than 10,000 audience ratings on Rotten Tomatoes give it a cumulative approval rating of 83 percent. You can stream A Fistful of Dynamite free on Tubi TV.
