Fistful of Dynamite (Giù la Testa) (1971)

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General		Extras
Category	Western	Theatrical Trailer
Rating
Year Of Production	1971
Running Time	147:30
RSDL / Flipper	RSDL (84:35)	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Language Select Then Menu
Region Coding	2,4	Directed By	Sergio Leone
Studio Distributor	MGM	Starring	James Coburn Rod Steiger Maria Monti Rik Battaglia Franco Graziosi Romolo Valli Domingo Antoine Antoine Saint-John Vivienne Chandler David Warbeck Giulio Battiferri Poldo Bendandi Omar Bonaro
Case	?
RPI	$14.95	Music	Ennio Morricone

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	English Dolby Digital 2.0 (224Kb/s) German Dolby Digital 2.0 (224Kb/s) French Dolby Digital 2.0 (224Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	2.35:1
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio	2.35:1	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No
Subtitles	English for the Hearing Impaired German for the Hearing Impaired French Dutch Swedish Finnish Norwegian Danish Portuguese Greek	Smoking	Yes
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	No

    As a child and teenager I used to love westerns, especially the Fistful of Dollars trilogy, but as I get older I find that I watch them rarely. I still love them, but my wife detests them, so they don't get much of a look in. In my wife's absence, I have taken the opportunity to take a look at this lesser known film from Sergio Leone which seemingly has a similar title to the trilogy, although to be fair this was the title given to it in the US in the hope that people would associate this film with the trilogy. In fact, other than being a western and being directed by Leone, the films have little in common. Leone's original Italian title was Giu La Testa which apparently translates as another alternative title Duck, you Sucker which is the catch phrase of James Coburn's character, John Mallory. The film has also been known as Once Upon a Time... the Revolution.

    This film is an interesting amalgam. It starts out as a light-hearted caper style film but after approximately 100 minutes becomes a serious film about revolutions and the effect they have on the common people. The film is set in Mexico during the Mexican Revolution. The story involves the chance meeting of two very different people. John Mallory (James Coburn) is an IRA bomber who is on the run from the English and finds himself in Mexico working as a mine blaster looking for silver. By chance he meets Juan Miranda (Rod Steiger), a Mexican peasant who leads a ragtag band of bandits (who mostly happen to be his children). Juan is impressed by John's prowess with explosives and attempts to get him to become his partner in a bank robbery. Mallory resists Juan's offer and spends a significant portion of the film trying to get away from him, without success. Eventually, by trapping him, Juan gets Mallory to agree to help him. However, all is not as it seems as Mallory is also in contact with the local revolutionaries lead by Doctor Villega (Romolo Valli). Without meaning to, Juan becomes a hero of the revolution but at much personal cost. It is at this point in the story that the film takes on a much more serious tone and the friendship between the main characters develops and deepens.

    This is quite a long film at 2 and a half hours, and as is normal for Sergio Leone has long passages without dialogue. This is not to say that the film is boring - far from it. It is full of action sequences as well as the slower more dreamy sequences including flashbacks to John's early days in Ireland. The film shows the confusion and tragedy which is part of a revolution or civil war and does not shy away from scenes of slaughter, especially in the second section of the film. The central theme of the film, about the effect of revolution on the common people, is verbalised by Juan in a memorable speech to John. Interestingly, this film opens with the strange juxtaposition of a quote about revolution by Mao Tse-Tung followed by the image of Rod Steiger urinating against a tree, which  I assume is a comment about the worth of revolutions.

    The cinematography is excellent with many interesting camera angles and lingering close-ups of eyes and faces. The score by Ennio Morricone does not have the power of the scores for the Fistful of Dollars trilogy. While there are some excellent parts, there are also some really dated sections, especially the repeating vocal refrain, which becomes annoying.

    The only real criticism I would have of this film is that it occasionally feels a little disjointed where scenes don't really seem to logically follow each other and you spend some time trying to work out what is going on. This film has been re-edited a number of times for various releases and this may account for some of this disjointedness. This version would seem to be the version which has previously been released on laserdisc in the USA, which includes many scenes not in the original US release.

    Both of the main actors do fine work here, with Steiger very believable as a Mexican peasant/bandit although he does resort to scenery chewing in some scenes.

    So, while not Leone's greatest film, it is certainly interesting and well worth having in your collection if you are a fan of the man's body of work.

Video

    The video quality is very good for a film of this age.

    The feature is presented in a 2.35:1 aspect ratio 16x9 enhanced which is the original aspect ratio.

    The picture was generally clear and sharp throughout, with no evidence of low level noise, although there were some scenes which were a little soft. Some of the soft scenes were intentional such as the flashback sequences to Ireland. There was some light film grain from time to time. The shadow detail was reasonable for a film of this age, without having the detail which can be seen in modern films.

    The colour was generally very good for a film of this vintage, however it was a little washed out, but this may be more to do with the desert locations than the transfer.

    Artefacts were kept to a minimum and were mostly film artefacts rather than MPEG compression related. There were generally only occasional specks with a larger one at 23:12, a bad section at 53:20 and an odd mark at 69:03. The film jumped slightly at 76:18 and there was one patch of very minor aliasing on the wall of the stagecoach near the beginning. All of these artefacts were minor, and generally this film is in very good condition and has been transferred well..

    There are subtitles in 10 languages including English for the hearing impaired. The English subtitles were clear and easy to read.

    The layer change occurs at 84:35 and is well placed. I nearly missed it.
    

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    The audio quality is good.

    This DVD contains three audio options, an English Dolby Digital 2.0 soundtrack encoded at 224 Kb/s and the same in German & French.

    Dialogue was generally clear and easy to understand although some lines were a little muffled and some characters had difficult accents. Most of the actors, except Steiger & Coburn, have been revoiced so their lips do not move with the dialogue.

    The score of this film by Ennio Morricone is quite a reasonable effort with some effective instrumentation but an annoying repeating vocal refrain. I did notice a slight distortion in the music at 53:20 but generally it came up reasonable well considering the mono soundtrack.

    The surround speakers and subwoofer were not used.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

Menu

    The menu included a still from the film and a scene selection function. It used a nice gun motif to indicate the position of the cursor.

Theatrical Trailer (3:34)

    This trailer purposefully attempts to link this film to the Fistful of Dollars trilogy, and focuses on the light portions of the film. Not bad.

    There is censorship information available for this title. Click here to read it (a new window will open). WARNING: Often these entries contain MAJOR plot spoilers.

    This film has not yet been released in Region 1. The Region 2 releases are exactly the same format as this. There was a Japanese version of this film which was a two disc set including the US cut and the Italian cut of the film on two separate discs. This was a limited edition in a wooden box. As this special version does not seem to be available, I will go with Region 4.

    The video quality is very good.

    The audio quality is good.

    The disc has only a theatrical trailer as an extra.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall