No Name on the Bullet (1959)

Directed by Jack Arnold; produced by Jack Arnold and Howard Christie

The residents of a prosperous western town are startled by the arrival of John Gant (Audie Murphy). Gant is a hired killer who shoots down men for the money paid to him by his victims’ enemies. Refusing to fight won’t save a man, as Gant has a knack of galling a victim into drawing a weapon first, then successfully claiming self-defence. Now, everyone is wondering for whom Gant has come, and who hired him. Soon, the townspeople find that their worst enemy isn’t Gant, it’s their own guilty consciences.

Probably the best of Murphy’s movies, No Name on the Bullet is as much a psychological drama with a western setting as a straight western. There is gun-play, but the real action is in the attitudes of the supporting characters.

Gant is like the Angel of Death; no one knows whom he will touch, and everyone starts searching their past, trying to determine who would want them dead. Those with clean consciences, such as the local doctor and his father, the blacksmith (played by Charles Drake and R.G. Armstrong, respectively, even though they were the same age) are worried only about the effects of Gant on the town.

Though the identity of Gant’s next victim will probably be no mystery to many viewers, there is nonetheless tension throughout the movie, as the townsfolk look askance at each other, and the doctor tries to talk Gant out of his mission and simultaneously to understand the young killer. The writing is very good in this respect, but also in terms of individual scenes.

There is a strong philosophical flavour to the dialogue, whether indirectly, in what the townspeople argue about, or directly, in the conversations between the doctor and Gant. There is a scene in which the two of them play chess, an intriguing variation of the scene between the knight and Death in The Seventh Seal, released two years before.

The acting is very good as well, especially on the part of Murphy, who plays a very restrained character, unnaturally calm, someone who knows well how people will act and react, perhaps because he has seen so many in extremis. He knows that he can defeat or face down any individual, and knows that a mob, threatened as individuals, won’t have the courage to do anything. He is also a content man, having no remorse for what he does, whether because he is truly amoral or because he is truly moral - though his morals would not be shared by the majority.

The direction is good, as well. Arnold is known more these days for his work in the science fiction genre (eg. The Creature from the Black Lagoon, The Incredible Shrinking Man) of the 1950s, though he eventually went to work almost exclusively in television. It is less the pace or blocking of scenes that provides the tension as the mannerisms and attitudes of the characters, more typical of psychological films than westerns.

No Name on the Bullet is a western that viewers who don’t care for westerns might like, a thoughtful examination of what impending death - or, rather, impending punishment - does to people, and whether or not they deserve what results.