While the Western genre may not have as many reoccurring characters as, say, horror or action, there still are a few pistol drawing, longpokes who have managed to appear in more than just a single film. The most famous of these, obviously, is Clint Eastwood’s Man With No Name who squinted his way through all three of Sergio Leone’s Spaghetti trilogy and I would probably say that the eyepatched and onery Rooster Cogburn comes next thanks to the combined efforts of both John Wayne and Jeff Bridges. Next up is the gothic stylings of Django, but due to the nature of Italian cinema ripping off everything to death, Franco Nero was only one of dozens of actors to take up the mantle – but surely the most bizarre series in Western history is that of Sebata, a well dressed sharpshooter who tended to pull insanely complicated cons that somehow all turned out as planned no matter what the hell happened. However, despite being portrayed by the lizard-like grin of Lee Van Cleef for two films of his trilogy, Yul Bryner stepped in in the middle due to a pay dispute, but anyone familiar with the type of bullshit that goes on in Italian genre cinema probably won’t find that too surprising.
Virtuous but opportunistic gunslinger Sabata rides into the Texan town of Daugherty just in time for a gang to extravagantly swoop in and rob a safe full of $100,000 of the Army’s money – however, after making a few friends with the eccentric down and outs that scrounge for booze, he rides out, catches up with the thieves and single handedly blows them all away is order to return the safe for a reward of $5000. While his booze sodden new buddy, Carrincha loudly states that he should’ve held out for more, a mysterious Banjo player named – what else – Banjo, takes it upon himself to introduce himself and claims that he and Sabata have even met in the past.
However, it soon becomes apparent that Sabata is hanging around to score himself a lot more that $5000 as he’s deduced that the heist was only an elaborate ruse perpetrated by pale psychotic dandy, Stengel who, with his partners arranged for the money yo be stolen so they could use it to purchase land cheaply and then sell it on to the railroads at a vastly inflated price. However, as Stengel seems to have the whole town in his pocket, Sabata opts to blackmail the dude and immediately starts thwarting any efforts to cover up the crime with a mixture of wry grins, superior gunplay and frankly unfathomable luck and everytime Stengel and his men fail, our hero jacks up his demands until he’s up to a staggering amount of $60,000.
With the loyal Carrincha, the mercenary Banjo and an acrobatic native American named Indio by his side, Sabata starts to close his trap in order to get his hefty payday, but can everyone within his inner circle be trusted, or has his inhuman talent of prepping for any emergency covered all the bases.
I’ve seen more than my fair share of odd Westerns in my day, but for the majority of its runtime, I have to admit, Sabata had me going back and forth for a bit there. The reason is that the movie is so unapologetically eccentric, there were many times where I wasn’t actually sure if I was watching a straight Western or a parody as the movie frequently pulls some audacious shit in order to make its hero look like the quick drawing bees knees, however, once you finally manage to get on its wavelength, Sabata proves to be quite a lot of fun.
Director Gianfranco Parolini, who had already found success making Westerns about guys with S names with the first of the Sartana series (another reoccurring Western hero), seems to have approached this movie with the aim to make the most Spagetti Western-y Spagetti Western that’s even been made. You can tell because almost every shot the film has is practically bending over backwards to look as iconically cinematic as Hell as we get countless shots of our various players slowly smiling enigmaticly once they feel they’ve gotten the upper hand. Honestly, if you were just to add together the wry, revealing grins of just Sabata and William Berger’s Banjo alone, you’d have more smug looking smiles than the entirety of Bruce Willis’ tenure on Moonlighting with a few to spare. But aside from some self-satisfied smirks, another thing Sabata puts its stock in is weirdo characters and plot reveals so outlandish, they frequently border on being flat out offensive.
Let’s deal with the cast first and as assorted groups of bush whacking oddballs go, Sabata gun is fully loaded. Sabata himself sees Van Cleef reading from the enigmatic Western hero playbook from cover to cover as his title role proves to be a slightly flashier version of Colonal Douglas Mortimer from For A Few Dollars More and even though his sense of honor seems to fluctuate wildly from scene to scene, the actor bmnever proves to be less than utterly watchable even when the plot starts taking the piss. Elsewhere, we have a worthy villain in the form of a sadistic mastermind who oddly looks like the Vic Reeves folk singing character, Dermot Mulligan, if he had recently been resurrected from the the dead and a strange, friendly double act of Carrincha, an alcoholic confederate veteran blessed with the vocal levels of Brian Blessed in a library and Indio, a mute native American who inexplicably has Spider-Man levels of agility that is obviously the cause of various trampolines hidden around the set. Completing this immensely bizarre, yet perversely watchable group is Banjo who literally wanders about the place being nosey before revealing that he’s earned his name by the fact he has a rifle hidden with his musical namesake for special occasions.
However, if these characters seem a little far fetched for such a brooding franchise, you wait until you face the plot twists the movie expects you duitfully to swallow regardless of how utterly fucking ludicrous they continuously are. Simply put, either Sabata is virtually invulnerable with enough prep time or he’s wearing more plot armour than anyone else in popular fiction as every single twist the movie has involves the reveal that our hero has impossibly pre-empted it without possibly having any prior knowledge. Booby traps, double crosses, ambushes, gambling, you name it, Sabata has somehow already planned for it with near supernatural foresight – be it suddenly revealing that he can also shoot bullets out of the butt of his gun’s handle, to him setting off his enemy’s hidden secret weapon by flipping a coin at it despite absolutely having no way of knowing how it works of if it even existed. “Someone wants yo keep you alive, Sabata” announces someone at one point, “Is it the fucking screenwriter?” was my rather callous reply…
And yet, while so many of these near impossible reveals my bring derisive bursts of laughter, once you realise that the movie is enthusiastically trading in far fetched bullshit, you can’t help but get caught up in it and soon you’ll enjoying the joke to the point where you’re practically begging Van Cleef to reveal something even more ludicrous he couldn’t possibly have known.
Well shot and incredibly entertaining once you build up an immunity to actual logic, Sabata may not be as beloved as some of his pistol packing peers, but does The Man With No Name have the power to be as omnipotent as a God? Didn’t think so.
🌟🌟🌟🌟
We Have Issues 