In Mexico at the time of the Revolution, Juan, the leader of a bandit family, meets John Mallory, an IRA explosives expert on the run from the British. Seeing John's skill with explosives, Juan decides to persuade him to join the bandits in a raid on the great bank of Mesa Verde. John in the meantime has made contact with the revolutionaries, and intends to use his dynamite in their service.
Written by
Anonymous
Plot Synopsis:
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In 1913 Mexico at the time of the Revolution. Juan Miranda (Rod Steiger), a Mexican outlaw leading a bandit family, meets John 'Sean' Mallory (James Coburn), an Irish Republican explosives expert on the run from the British. Noting his skill with explosives, Juan relentlessly tries to make him join a raid on the Mesa Verde national bank. John in the meantime has made contact with the revolutionaries and intends to use his dynamite in their service. The bank is hit as part of an orchestrated revolutionary attack on the army organized by Doctor Villega (Romolo Valli). Juan, interested only in the money, is shocked to find that the bank has no funds and instead is used by the army as a political prison. John, Juan and his family end up freeing hundreds of prisoners, causing Juan to become a "great, grand, glorious hero of the revolution".

The revolutionaries are chased into the hills by an army detachment led by Colonel Günther Reza (Antoine Saint-John). John and Juan volunteer to stay behind with two machine guns and dynamite. Much of the army's detachment is destroyed while crossing a bridge which is machinegunned by them and blown to bits by John. Col. Reza who commands an armoured car, survives. After the battle, John and Juan find most of their comrades, including Juan's family and children, have been killed by the army in a cave. Engulfed with grief and rage, Juan goes out to fight the army singlehanded and is captured. John sneaks into camp where he witnesses executions of many of his fellow revolutionaries by firing squad. They had been informed on by Dr. Villega, who has been tortured by Col. Reza and his men. This evokes in John memories of a similar betrayal by Nolan (David Warbeck), his best friend, whom John kills for informing. Juan faces a firing squad of his own, but John arrives and blows up the squad and the wall with dynamite just in time. They escape on a motorcycle John is driving.

John and Juan hide in the animal coach of a train. It stops to pick up the tyrannical Governor Don Jaime (Franco Graziosi), who is fleeing (with a small fortune) from the revolutionary forces belonging to Pancho Villa and Emiliano Zapata. As the train is ambushed, John, as a test of Juan's loyalty, lets him choose between shooting the Governor and accepting a bribe from him. Juan kills Jaime, and also steals the Governor's spoils. As the doors to the coach open, Juan is greeted by a large crowd and again unexpectedly hailed as a great hero of the revolution. He throws the money back into the coach to John.

On a train with commanders of the revolution, John and Juan are joined by Dr. Villega, who has escaped. John alone knows of Villega's betrayal. They learn that Pancho Villa's forces will be delayed by 24 hours and that an army train carrying 1,000 soldiers and heavy weapons, led by Col. Reza, will be arriving in just 3 hours, which will surely overpower the rebel position. John suggests they rig a locomotive with dynamite and send it head on. He requires one other man, but instead of picking Juan, who volunteers, he chooses Dr. Villega. It becomes clear to Villega that he knows of the betrayal. John nonetheless pleads with him to jump off the locomotive before it hits the army's train, but Villega feels guilty and stays on board. John jumps in time and the two trains collide, killing Villega and a number of soldiers.

The revolutionaries' ambush is successful, but as John approaches to meet Juan, he is shot in the back by Col. Reza. An enraged Juan riddles the Colonel's body with a machine gun. As John lies dying, he continues to have memories of his best friend, Nolan, and a young woman both apparently loved. John recalls killing Nolan after being betrayed by him to the law. Juan kneels by his side to ask about Dr. Villega. John keeps the doctor's secret and tells Juan that he died a hero of the revolution. As Juan goes to seek help, John has a flashback to his time in Ireland with Nolan and a girl whom they both were in love with; knowing his end is near, sets off a second charge he secretly laid in case the battle went bad. The film ends with Juan staring at the burning remains, asking forlornly: "What about me?"

When James Coburn (who had been offered roles in Sergio Leone's Per un pugno di dollari (1964) and Once Upon a Time in the West (1968)) was offered the role of John Mallory by Leone, he was initially reluctant. He had dinner with Henry Fonda (star of Once Upon a Time in the West (1968)) and asked him what he thought of Leone. Fonda told him that he considered Leone the greatest director he ever worked with. Coburn then took the part (similarly, Fonda himself had been reluctant to take the part Leone offered him, but was persuaded by his friend, Eli Wallach).
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Sergio Leone offered the role of Juan Miranda to Eli Wallach, but Wallach had already committed to another project. After Leone begged Wallach to play the part, he dropped out of the other project and told Leone he'd do his movie. However, the studio already had Rod Steiger signed. Leone offered no compensation to Wallach, and Wallach subsequently sued.
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The film was initially planned to have been directed by Leone's assistant Giancarlo Santi, but both Rod Steiger and James Coburn demanded that Sergio Leone direct the picture, so Santi was out.
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George Lazenby was originally chosen to play the lead role in this film and accepted, but he ultimately declined the role.
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According to Sergio Leone, Sam Peckinpah agreed to direct this film after Peter Bogdanovich had turned the project down, but for financial reasons he was turned down by United Artists. Leone's collaborators (especially writers Sergio Donati and Luciano Vincenzoni), noting the director's frequent embellishment of the facts concerning his films, claim that Peckinpah did not even consider it--Donati claimed Peckinpah was "too shrewd to be produced by a fellow director".
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In the flashback scenes, Irish republicans can be seen selling a paper called "Freedom", written in an Irish Celtic script. This is probably a reference to the Fenian newspaper "Saoirse", which is "Freedom" in Irish. The original "Saoirse" first appeared in November 1910 and continued as a monthly publication until December 1914, when it was suppressed by British authorities. A separate newspaper of the same name has been published by Republican Sinn Fèin (a splinter group of the main party) since the 1980s.
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The chanting of "Shon shon shon" in Ennio Morricone's soundtrack was the suggestion of Carla Leone, who thought it would sound better than the original "Wah wah wah" chants. Contrary to popular belief, Morricone himself has said in interviews the chants do not represent the names of characters but are just part of the soundscape like the chants in all the other Sergio Leone westerns.
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Rod Steiger demanded that his scenes be filmed with natural sound if possible. This was virtually unheard of in Italian cinema and led to much tension between Steiger and the crew.
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Juan and Seán both mean "John" in Spanish and Irish respectively. When John Mallory is asked his name by Juan Miranda, he says "Seán", but retracts it, and says "John", possibly thinking the name would confuse people (it is not uncommon for Irish nationalists and republicans to use both the English and Gaelic forms of their names). It has also been speculated that "Seán" was the name of his friend from Ireland whom we see in the flashback sequences, who is otherwise not mentioned by name in the film and only referred to as "Nolan" in the screenplay.
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Malcolm McDowell was considered for both John Mallory and Nolan.
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Clint Eastwood was approached by Sergio Leone for the role of John Mallory, but he saw it as just a different take of the same character he had already played in the Dollars Trilogy, and he also wanted to end his association with the Italian film industry. As a result, he declined the offer and starred in Hang 'Em High (1968) instead.
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Sergio Leone was initially dissatisfied with Rod Steiger's performance in that he played his character as a serious, Zapata-like figure. As a result, tensions rose between Steiger and Leone numerous times, including an incident that ended with Steiger walking off during the filming of the scene when John destroys Juan's stagecoach. However, after the film's completion, Leone and Steiger were content with the final result, and Steiger was known to praise Leone for his skills as a director.
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The book that John is reading in the scene with Juan, who has a disagreement with him about the meaning of revolution, is entitled "Patriot" and is written by Mikhail Bakunin, a real-life Russian revolutionary anarchist.
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Despite the politically charged setting, the film was not intended as a political film: Sergio Leone himself said that the Mexican Revolution in the film is meant only as a symbol, not as a representation of the real one, and that it was chosen because of its fame and its relationship with cinema, and he contends that the real theme of the film is friendship:

"I chose to oppose an intellectual, who has experienced a revolution in Ireland, with a naïve Mexican... you have two men: one naïve and one intellectual (self-centred as intellectuals too often are in the face of the naïve). From there, the film becomes the story of Pygmalion reversed. The simple one teaches the intellectual a lesson. Nature gains an upper hand and finally the intellectual throws away his book of Bakunin's writings. You suspect damn well that this gesture is a symbolic reference to everything my generation has been told in the way of promises. We have waited, but we still are waiting! I have the film say, in effect "Revolution means confusion"".
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The development began during the production of Once Upon a Time in the West (1968), when Sergio Leone's collaborator Sergio Donati presented him with an early treatment of the film. Around the same time, political riots had broken out in Paris, and the concepts of revolution and left-wing nationalism had become popular among university students and filmmakers across Europe. Leone, who had used his previous films to deconstruct the romanticization of the American Old West, decided to use the film to deconstruct the romanticized nature of revolution, and to shed light on the political instability of contemporary Italy.
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Still hot from his Oscar win for In the Heat of the Night (1967), Rod Steiger earned $700,000 for this film.
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Sergio Leone, Sergio Donati and Luciano Vincenzoni worked together on the film's screenplay for three to four weeks, discussing characters and scenes for the film. Donati, who had previously acted as an uncredited script doctor for Il buono, il brutto, il cattivo (1966), conceived Juan Miranda's character as an extension of Tuco from that film. Meanwhile, Leone was largely responsible for the character of John Mallory, and the film's focus on the development of John and Juan's friendship. At times, however, Leone, Donati, and Vincenzoni found that they had highly differing opinions about how the film should be made, with Leone wanting to have the film produced on a large scale with an epic quality, while Donati and Vincenzoni perceived the film as a low-budget thriller.
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Juan's gang was composed by his 6 sons, his father and other 4 men.
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Impressionist Will Jordan's agent took out a quarter page ad in Variety just after the film was released stating that Jordan had dubbed the voice of Rod Steiger in the film.
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The inspiration for the firing squad scene came from Francisco Goya, and in particular from his set of prints The Disasters of War. Sergio Leone showed the prints to director of photography Giuseppe Ruzzolini in order to get the lighting and color effects he wanted.
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It was the fourth most popular movie of the year in France.
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The role of John Mallory was written for Jason Robards, who had played Cheyenne in Once Upon a Time in the West (1968). However, the studio wanted a bigger name for his character.
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Sergio Leone's biographer, Sir Christopher Frayling, gave a lecture at a special screening in Dublin's IFI in 2011. He had director John Boorman along as a guest, who explained that he had helped Sergio Leone pick the various Irish locations used.
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Some of the locations used previously featured in Sergio Leone's Dollar Trilogy films; for example, the Almería Railway Station, used for the train sequence in Per qualche dollaro in piu (1965), returns in this film as Mesa Verde's station.
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The longest available version of Duck, You Sucker is 157 minutes long, but as Sergio Leone confirmed in an interview, his original cut was about 40 minutes longer, and it was even test screened to audience before he made cuts on it. He also said that most of the cuts were made in first half of the film. There were rumors and actually very detailed reports from many people who claimed that longer version of the film was shown in parts of Europe. Some of the more well known and confirmed deleted scenes from the film which Leone also mentioned in same interview include the following;

Early in the film when Juan and his children first meet John, Juan's children completely dismantle his motorcycle, and Juan gets mad at them and tells them to reassemble it.

The most famous deleted scene from the film and one which was shown on many lobby cards and stills for the film took place after the scene where John destroys Juan's coach, and before night scene where Juan tricks John into blowing up the church. In this deleted scene Juan and others take his guns and force him to walk through the desert without water. At one point John finds some puddle of water but as he goes down to drink one of Juan's children pisses in it. This scene was very similar to the scene in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966) where Tuco forces Blondie to walk through the desert, and it would also explain John's look in the scene in film where he wakes up in old church and takes the bottle of water like he hasn't been drinking for long time, and why he is angry and tries to kill Juan and his kids by blowing them up in church.

After the bridge explosion scene, there was a big part of the film that was cut out and slightly re-edited. Originally after that scene, Juan and John reunite with his bandits in the cave where none of them talks but their faces show what they're thinking. In the same scene there was another flashback with John remembering his time in Ireland (actress who played John's girlfriend also mentioned in one interview how additional flashback scene didn't made it into the final film), and in anger, he throws bottle on gramophone which breaks the record it was playing, but he apologizes saying he didn't do it on purpose. The others say how their feet are hurting and John responds by saying that they'll keep hurting and that they have to get to Mexico City as soon as possible.

Another deleted scene from this part of the film had Villega visiting some sick man in rebel safe house when he gets arrested by Colonel Reza's soldiers, who take him to Reza who then tortures Villega in what was said to be very violent scene. While this is going on, John and Juan go to the same man Villega was visiting when he got arrested where they find out what happened and Juan goes back to caves to warn others, while John goes to try and find Villega. This is originally where the scene where John sees Villega in the truck with Reza when his soldiers kill other revolutionaries took place, and right after that one next scene was him going back to the caves where he and Juan find all the other revolutionaries and his children dead. This is another deleted scene that was also shown on lobby cards and stills.
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James Coburn had previously been considered for other Sergio Leone projects, including Per un pugno di dollari (1964) and Once Upon a Time in the West (1968). He had also previously been considered for a role in another United Artists-financed Zapata Western, Sergio Corbucci's Queimada (1969), but Franco Nero was later cast in what was originally his role.
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The film is believed to have been influenced by Sam Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch (1969), and it shares some plot elements with Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid (1973), a western film also starring James Coburn and released a year later.
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Sergio Leone's final Western.
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With the Black Panther movement in full swing and riots taking place in Paris, the late 1960s were a period of revolution. Sergio Leone's intention with Giu la testa (1971) was to demystify the romanticism surrounding revolutions.
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Rod Steiger and Sergio Leone didn't get on with each other during filming. They patched things up when they both saw the final film.
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Juan, a role written for Eli Wallach, was modeled on Tuco from 'The Good, the Bad and the Ugly'.
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Rod Steiger's total kill count: 37.
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James Coburn's total kill count: 123.
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The bar scene contained in the flashback sequences set in Ireland was filmed in Toners Pub. This is on Dublin's Baggott Street, and looks much the same now as it did then.
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Despite not having any scenes in the Irish flashback footage, Rod Steiger was present for the filming in Dublin.
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A close-on shot of one of the convoy's trucks as it rolls through mud shows a modern pneumatic tire and wheel.
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Use of MG42s, a machine gun developed in Germany three decades after the Mexican revolution.
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In the train, the automatic pistol that Juan Miranda uses is a Browning GP35. As its names suggests, this model has become available in 1935 (so contemporary of the mentioned MG42).
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Although the action takes place circa 1914, when Mallory's possessions are rifled by Miranda's family, a flag with the legend "IRA" is pulled out. The IRA was not formed until 1919.
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In the first scene where Juan holds up the Stage Coach, one of the children in the bandit gang is holding a Spanish double action pistol, an Astra 400. If this movie were to take place in 1914, the Astra 400 model would not have been invented yet, as it was put into production in 1921.
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The newspaper that John Mallory is given in the "surgical operation" scene reads in the right column "Y el mundial lo ganó Pelè...que es el rey.. balón", which would be translated as "And the Soccer World Cup was won by Pelè...who is the king... soccer ball". Famous soccer player Pelè was not even born in the 1910's.
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The dynamite Sean hands Juan before the bank raid is several sticks in a bundle, with a single fuse and cap in the center, but when Juan dynamites the vault door, he uses two single sticks, individually fused and capped.
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When Sean sets his machine gun back on its tripod after setting the charges, it is loaded with a section of belt with no more than (possibly) fifty cartridges; he is never seen to reload it, but fires many more shots than that.Also, when he stops shooting, it is because the gun has run out of ammunition - we can clearly see the bitter end of the belt go through the action, leaving empty links hanging on the right side, and no belt at all on the left side. But in later shots there is a belt with unfired cartridges visible on that side - though it seems to change length between shots.
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When the deserter is taken from the train to be executed along with two others the wall behind him is shot at and damaged on both sides of the deserter. The following close-up shot of the deserter getting shot in the back reveals no damage to the wall.
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When Juan is robbing the 'bank' in Mesa Verde, when he shoots open the second door in the basement, we see what appears to be a soldier (khakis, long jacket, knee boots, Sam Brown belt) round the corner on the stairs and casually continue walking down them.
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During the executions in the rain, when Mallory sees Villega identifying rebels, the speed of the windshield wipers changes. In one wide angle shot, the Col is shown manually moving the blades at a relatively slow rate. In other shots, the blades are moving much faster and with less jerkiness than when seen with the manual movement.
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When Juan's youngest son is shown lying dead, the actor can be seen breathing.
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In the train wreck sequence, some of the miniature shots of the explosion and the train being destroyed were not printed in proper anamorphic format, and are badly distorted.
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John's second flashback to his killing of Nolan in the Irish pub contains footage that does not match up to the first time we see this scene. Nolan's head is positioned differently in both versions of the flashback (in the first, his head remains in the same position, while in the second it is tilted at first before moving back to a neutral position), while the shot of John pulling his concealed gun out is also different (the gun's barrel is positioned closer to the left of the screen in the first flashback, but closer to the center in the second).
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Juan's machine gun is not pointing at Gutierrez as he shoots him.
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Depending on how the film's image is presented, an obvious dummy stand-in for Romolo Valli can be seen during the climactic train crash.
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