Duck, You Sucker
Directed by Sergio Leone
- western
The story
At the beginning of the 1913 Mexican Revolution, greedy bandit Juan Miranda and idealist John H. Mallory, an Irish Republican Army explosives expert on the lam from the British, fall in with a band of revolutionaries plotting to strike a national bank. When it turns out that the government has been using the bank as a hiding place for illegally detained political prisoners -- who are freed by the blast -- Miranda becomes a revolutionary hero against his will.
What it’s like
Sun-bleached and dust-choked, with wide Techniscope frames that hold the Mexican plains as flat, shimmering horizons and let the sky swallow whole armies of tiny figures. Leone's compositions favour long, unhurried tracking shots and sudden tight close-ups on sweating faces, while the grain and warm, slightly washed colour give the whole thing the weathered look of an old postcard left in the sun. Ennio Morricone's score swells from a jaunty mariachi-tinged whistle into grand, mournful brass, and the quieter passages are full of wind, creaking wagon wheels and distant gunfire. The vibe is rowdy, bittersweet and morally scruffy: a buddy comedy of two wary, self-serving men slowly drawn into a revolution neither fully believes in. Pacing is leisurely and digressive, with long talky stretches broken by sharp, savage bursts of violence, including a brief but disturbing rape and several bloody executions and explosions that land hard rather than lingering. Expect a decidedly adult, non-gentle experience. It suits a long, slow afternoon with a strong coffee, or a late-night rewatch for anyone who loves Leone's operatic set pieces, political irony and the chemistry between two battered antiheroes.
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