My Name Is Nobody

Sergio Leone produced this and reportedly could not keep his hands off it, and it plays as the spaghetti western writing its own obituary with a grin. Henry Fonda is an ageing gunfighter who wants nothing more than a boat to Europe and a quiet retirement; Terence Hill is Nobody, a fast, beaming kid who worships him and would rather the old man go out facing a hundred and fifty riders alone, so history has a legend to remember. It is a comedy and an elegy in the same breath, Fonda's weary myth handing the genre over to the jokey Trinity-era version that killed it. Morricone scores the Wild Bunch's charge to a warped Ride of the Valkyries and it is glorious. The affectionate goodbye the whole cycle deserved.