Redundant and unnecessary.

Great Film overall

As Good As It Gets

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

Sergio Leone sums up the entire Italian film industry by starting the film with a beautifully framed and composed shot of...Rod Steiger pissing on some ants. And thus starts his fifth and final Spaghetti Western that some people declare a classic while others declare it a failure. Sure, it's got virtually no plot and just sort of meanders along for two and a half hours, but it's got Rod Steiger as a Mexican and it's directed by Sergio Leone - it's great!Rod plays Juan, a bandit leader who tricks his way onto a lush carriage full of rich folk who treat him like he's some kind of disease (amazingly acted by Steiger as he plays up to their bigoted expectations), before turning the tables on them and robbing them of everything they have - including the carriage. It's not long after that Juan meets Sean (or John), who of course is an ex-member of the IRA and loves blowing everything up. Sean/John is played by James Coburn who is literally dressed from head to toe in dynamite, and Juan has a religious experience when he realises that Sean is the key to the bank that Juan has always wanted to break into. The problem these days is that the Mexican revolution is going on and there's soldiers everywhere...and Juan does not want anything to do with no revolution...Although Leone takes his sweet, sweet time digging a plot out of this one, it's such a delight to watch Rod Steiger being Mexican. He slides from wide eyed peasant innocence to rage and his interactions with Coburn are hilarious (usually because Coburn tells him to shut up most of the time). And the cursing! Eeh - the language!Speaking of Coburn, he's having a problem with flashbacks throughout the film - Irish flashbacks involving David Warbreck! Warbreck would go on to be a leading man in Italian films shortly but here he just seems to be involved on some confusing romantic love triangle mixed with paramilitary business. Were they sharing that woman or were they all into each other?There's no iconic gunfights here but there are some large scale battles and a lot of epic tracking shots that depict the carnage of the revolution. Italian minatures master and awesome director in his own right Antonio Margheriti provides the tiny train special effects.I haven't mentioned a story because there isn't one.

I have no problem overall with the movie. The story is decent, albeit a little far fetched, but after all, this is fiction. But the movie is near 2 1/2 hours long. A half hour could be cut just by decreasing the amount of time the actors stare at each other. Sure, I know it's a Sergio technique, but it doesn't work well when there's little tension. When the bad guy is staring down the good guy in Once Upon a Time in the West or the Good, the Bad, the Ugly there's real tension there. Two unarmed guys staring at each other in an empty room, not the same thing. There are also disjointed moments in the film, like when Miranda's (Rod Steiger) kids are lying about dead in a cave. Didn't see that happen. And why did Mallory shoot his friend in the Irish pub? Again, overall a solid film. Classic? Nope, fell far short of that for me.

This is not a Sergio Leone Spaghetti Western. Instead of a nameless stranger wandering into some town in the west and gunning away all his problems, we open on a naive Mexican peeing into the ground and playing his dumbstruck role quite well. We can tell by the way the camera focuses in extreme close-up on the beady eyes and mouths sloppily consuming food of the high class passengers of the carriage that Juan is fiercely envious and furious at the state of affairs. And their dialogue confirms it too, mocking and racist, and he is forced to goofily play along so he can take his revenge. Later on, he has a passionate monologue about his distastes for revolutionaries and the thinly veiled false promises they deliver, but somehow gets swept up in one anyway. It is unusual for Leone to be political; one might suggest that he finds a common view in Sean Mallory, the jaded, cynical Irishman who has experienced betrayal in his homeland and wants to create change elsewhere. The events bring these two unlikely characters together. There are arguably more visual flourishes than ever before. Leone has always let his images tell the story; it helps when your main characters talks more with his gun and hat then with his clipped, minimalistic dialogue. This is more of the same. There is that infamous moment where Juan connects the dots and sees the criminal potential in Sean's explosives expertise, and Leone highlights this with a cartoonish, flashing banner above his head like a casino neon sign screaming 'Jackpot'. When he first arrives at the famed Mesa Verde National Bank, his eyes light up and Morricone adds this dramatic organ piece that seems fit for a lavish cathedral. It is as if the riches that lay waiting inside attain an almost religious type of love and desire - he wrings his hands like a giddy child discovering a stash of candy. And Leone as always loves his zoom in closeups - he lets his actors freely emote, especially in the eyes - there's that great shot of Juan peering out from the slit in the poster, with a premonition of his future choices. But as they get deeper and deeper into the revolution, it becomes clear that things are not what they seem, and their choices have morphed into bigger and more dangerous consequences. After a thrilling large- scale action sequence that involved blowing up an actual bridge, they return to find their families and comrades slaughtered and there is this long, moody period where the characters are silently grieving. Early Leone would not find the time for this. There is also Sean's flashbacks which have a hazy, dreamlike quality - they litter the film throughout and continually haunt his memories (perhaps at times lingering a tad too long), whereas previously they had been mostly a technique used to boost the intensity of the climatic encounter. In one moment, they hit Sean with such startling potency that the edits hammer into him like the rattle of a machine gun. And there is darkness and edge to their actions that seems so far removed from the sun-baked plains of the western; a grim execution by firing squad in the rainy night that reminds me of Goya's The Third of May 1808, while our pair watches from afar. This sort of helplessness is something that Leone had not always considered for his heroes (or at least, anti-heroes). Eastwood had carried with him an air of coolness and invincibility. It certainly is stylish and a lot of fun. We chuckle along every time Sean walks away with a swagger and utters those titular lines. Morricone's soundtrack is walking the same walk - there is no twisting flute or cacophony of whistles to accompany that lone figure on the plains. The heavy bass-line of 'Invention of John' over the opening credits seems to be constantly building towards a climax, like a cowboy strutting his step. He isn't afraid to juxtapose mass murder with these stirring strings - it is a victory, but at what cost, and for what gain? As I watched this, I was asked by a young friend whether they were the good guys or the bad guys. It seems to be a moral quandary that never really is broached. Is revolution stylish and elegant, or is it a brutal act of violence? Can we blame Juan for getting so caught up in these events, just after he rants about the impossibilities of revolution? Maybe he should have ducked and not let his sense of responsibility get the better of him, else he finds himself an unanswerable question at the end of the film.

Sergio Leone's best film, in my opinion. That doesn't say much, though to some it might. In my opinion the four movies he is most famous for - Once Upon a Time in the West, The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, A Fistful of Dollars and For a Few Dollars More - are okay but are vastly over-rated. Slow, badly produced, with holey plots, ridiculous dialogue and hammy acting, especially by the supporting cast. The only things preventing those from being total failures was the action scenes and, in three of them, the acting of Clint Eastwood.A Fistful of Dynamite is better in all those respects, without compromising on the action. Decent plot, though not entirely watertight. There's even a few nice themes running through it. Themes of patriotism, family, loyalty and camaraderie.Dialogue is OK. Has some silly moments but mostly fine.Performances are fine. Rod Steiger and James Coburn put in solid performances in the lead roles and the supporting cast don't embarrass themselves.Production is still reasonably cheap though. You get the usual effect of it appearing as if the actors voices have been dubbed in, rather than being recorded live.This is also shorter than those four, which is a blessing. There are still some pointless and/or drawn out scenes but these are more limited in number than the other four. Helps the pacing of the movie too.The main issue with this one is the fact that the soundtrack consists of one song and that seems to be on an infinite loop...Ultimately a very engaging and entertaining western.