"Duck Your Head", "Get Down"), also known as A Fistful of Dynamite and Once Upon a Time ... the Revolution, is a 1971 epic Zapata Western film directed and co-written by Sergio Leone and starring Rod Steiger, James Coburn, and Romolo Valli.

After they accidentally meet under less-than-friendly circumstances, Juan and John involuntarily become heroes of the Revolution, despite being forced to make heavy sacrifices.

[7][8] In Revolution-torn 1913 Mexico, outlaw Juan Miranda leads a family of bandits, robs a coach of wealthy men and rapes a female passenger who insulted him.

Passing by on a motorcycle is John H. Mallory, an Irish Republican explosives expert, who works in Mexico as a silver prospector.

Juan asks John (who initially states his name as "Seán") to help him rob the Mesa Verde National Bank.

After John refuses, Juan frames him for the murder of his employer and several soldiers, making him a wanted criminal and offering to "protect" him in exchange for his help.

Arriving in the city before Juan, John makes contact with revolutionaries led by physician Dr. Villega and agrees to use his explosives in their service.

Pancho Villa's forces will be delayed by twenty-four hours, and a train carrying a thousand soldiers and heavy weapons, led by Ruiz, will arrive that evening, which will surely overpower the rebel position.

John pleads with him to jump off the locomotive before it hits the army's train, but Villega feels guilty and stays on board.

[9] Around the same time, political riots had broken out in Paris, and the ideals of revolution and left-wing nationalism had become popular among university students and filmmakers across Europe.

[9][10] Sam Peckinpah then agreed to direct the film after Bogdanovich's departure, only to be turned down for financial reasons by United Artists.

Leone showed the prints to director of photography Giuseppe Ruzzolini in order to get the lighting and color effects he wanted.

He has identified numerous references to both World Wars in the film, such as Colonel Reza's commanding of an armored car resembling a Nazi tank commander, the massacre of Juan's family (which bears similarities to the Ardeatine massacre of 1944), and an execution victim resembling Benito Mussolini.

The role of John Mallory was written for Jason Robards, who had played Cheyenne in Once Upon a Time in the West,[9] but the studio wanted a bigger name for his character.

Clint Eastwood was then approached by Leone for the role, 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.

was composed by Ennio Morricone, who collaborated with Leone in all his previous projects as a director with the exception of his debut, The Colossus of Rhodes.

[11] He also sees "Invention for John", which plays over the opening credits and is essentially the film's theme, "as epic and truly wondrous as anything Morricone ever did".

I have the film say, in effect "Revolution means confusion".Another theme is amoral non-engagement: Juan is very loyal to his family (consisting of his six children, each from a different mother), but he cannot be trusted by anyone else.

[4][19] In France, it was the fourth most popular film released there in 1972, behind A Clockwork Orange, Stadium Nuts and Last Tango in Paris.

failed to gain any substantial recognition from the critics at the time of debut, especially compared to Leone's other films, though he did win the David di Donatello for Best Director.

The website's critical consensus reads, "Duck, You Sucker is a saucy helping of spaghetti western, with James Coburn and Rod Steiger's chemistry igniting the screen and Sergio Leone's bravura style on full display".

[20] Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 77 out of 100, based on 5 critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews.

[22] The New York Observer argues that Leone's direction, Morricone's score and the leads' performance "ignite an emotional explosion comparable to that of Once Upon a Time in the West".

In Mexico, where the film is known as Los Héroes de Mesa Verde, it was refused classification and effectively banned until 1979 because it was considered offensive to the Mexican people and the Revolution.

Many scenes were cut because they were deemed too violent, profane or politically sensitive, including a quote from Mao Zedong about the nature of revolutions and class struggle.

[9][24][25] Theatrical prints were generally of poor quality, and the film was marketed as a light-hearted spiritual successor to the Dollars Trilogy,[25][26] not at all as Leone intended, and it did not succeed in gaining press notice.

[9][25][26] In 1989, Image Entertainment released the film on laserdisc, including some material cut from the original US version and lasting 138 minutes.

In 2005, following the restoration of Leone's The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, MGM re-released the film in the UK with more supplemental material, the aforementioned flashback scene reinstated and with a newly created 5.1 surround soundtrack.

Furthermore, it has been reported that the mono soundtrack included on the 2007 Collector's Edition is not the original mix, but simply a fold-down of the surround remaster.