Regular Plot Devices
A general outline of a standard Zapata Western plot went as follows:
- The two main characters would be an ignorant Mexican bandit peon who knows nothing about the politics of revolution, and an outsider — American or European — who is in some way involved in the revolution. The bandit would usually, though not always, have a large gang of followers who would be used as expendable fodder for the movie's action scenes, and to represent his ties to his friends and families, rather than to any abstract idea of revolution.
- The setting would most often be the Mexican Revolution of 1913, particularly during the reign of General Victoriano Huerta.
- In most films, the outsider manipulates the peon and his gang into joining the revolution, for his own personal gain, for the benefit of an outside influence, or often for the outsider's own amusement.
- The villain is usually an American or German mercenary (sometimes even a Frenchman, given France's involvement in Mexico during the 1860s), a fascist-like Mexican general, or a foreign trust or corporation (Northamerican or European) out to control some resource (Oil, Silver...)
Virtually all political Westerns, Zapata or not, were made from a Marxist point of view, and extensively referenced the fascist regimes of Benito Mussolini in Italy (under whom most of the film makers had lived) and Adolf Hitler in Germany. They also frequently criticized contemporary US foreign policy, particularly the Vietnam War and the role of the US military and intelligence in Latin America, Africa, and elsewhere. The films are parables of the relationship between the capitalist First World, as represented by the outsider character, and the Third World represented by Mexico.
Some of the most popular examples of this subgenre include Sergio Corbucci's films with Tomas Milian and/or Franco Nero, particularly A Professional Gun (1968) and Compañeros (1970), though these films were often criticized for using the political issues being portrayed as plot devices, rather than a serious attempt to make a point. A similar story structure was used in Gillo Pontecorvo's non-Western Burn!, with Marlon Brando playing William Walker (filibuster), which takes place on a fictional Portuguese island colony in the Caribbean in the 19th century.
Sergio Leone's contribution to the Zapata Western was Duck, You Sucker! (1971), with Rod Steiger and James Coburn, which played almost paradoxically as both an endorsement and criticism of the revolutionary politics of some of its peers, as it portrayed the revolution in a less romanticized manner than a lot of other films in the genre.
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