Western Whopper

By RICHARD SCHICKEL

MY NAME IS NOBODY

Directed by TONINO VALERM Screenplay by ERNESTO GASTALDI

Jack Beauregard (Henry Fonda) may be "the last hope for law-and-order in the West," but he is sick of the responsibility, not to mention the danger that goes with it. Take this fast-draw kid (Terence Hill) who insists his name really is Nobody, but who may want to become Somebody by outdrawing Jack. Who needs him, especially when there is a boat leaving New Orleans for Europe in a couple of weeks? There only a heart attack can cause a man to drop dead in the middle of a street.

For a while it looks as if My Name Is Nobody is going to be just another reworking of the familiar story of the gunfighter who wants to quit but cannot. That reckons without Nobody, who turns out to be not just a hero-worshiper but perhaps the first gunfighter groupie. He wants Jack to go out in style and assure his place in history by taking on not three or four baddies but the whole damn Wild Bunch--150 strong. Jack is reluctant; the kid persists. In the end he successfully maneuvers Jack into legendary status and sets things up so that the old man can enjoy life.

It is all very satisfying, but even better is the way Director Valerii has embellished a traditional western plain song with eccentric bursts of baroque invention. A disciple of Sergio Leone, inventor and master of the spaghetti western, Valerii has found a way to have fun with his form without indulging in parody or resorting to bloody excesses that have marred so many recent westerns. There is his handling of the Wild Bunch, which he converts into a men acing abstraction: a cloud of dust, a thunder of hoofs, an excess rendered so mysterious by distance that it is hard to know whether to laugh or be scared.

Fonda may now have to don steel-rimmed glasses before he can draw a bead on his targets, but he is still a great American presence, an icon to be reckoned with. The blond, blue-eyed Hill blends the spirit of a devilish boy with an adult's competence in the hard moments of a hard trade. You half expect him to pull a toad out of his holster, and you never quite believe that he can draw thrice in the time it takes ordinary men to draw once. And you shouldn't. For this is not the legendary West, but the tall-tale West, where realistic detail is introduced merely to lend credence to one of the year's most expert whoppers.

qed Richard Schickel

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