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Reviewed by Glenn Erickson
John Wayne's last film is a respected Western that nonetheless hasn't much to offer in either
originality or thrills... its virtues lie elsewhere. When it barely did respectable boxoffice in 1976 the industry chalked it
up to the death of the Western genre. The film's main impression is mostly as a valentine to The Duke,
in spite of a literate script, excellent performances, and strong direction
from veteran action helmer Don Siegel.
Synopsis:
Aging gunfighter John Bernard Brooks (John Wayne) gravitates to Carson City, Nevada,
where Doctor E.W. Hostetler (James Stewart) gives him the official word on his failing health -
cancer, with six weeks to live. At first unwelcome at the boarding house of the widow Rogers (Lauren
Bacall), he quickly strikes up a friendship with her and her son Gillom (Ron Howard), even after the
secret of his notoriety and his imminent demise leak out. In between fending off opportunists seeking
to profit from his situation, and even a few would-be assassins, Brooks takes his doctor's advice and
arranges an alternative to a painful death in bed, by literally inviting three local toughs to a
shootout at the
local saloon.
Proof positive that Sam Peckinpah's elegiac Westerns closed the door on the genre (or at least its
classic naive form), The Shootist begins by restaging Peckinpah's single most telling moment,
a simple incident from Ride the High Country, with John Books shooed out of the road as an
old man made obsolete by progress.
Wayne carries the film in high dignity, playing the dying gunslinger in his serious actor mode (
In Harm's Way) as opposed to his tired 'Duke' persona. Naturally he evoked the
sympathy of his legions of fans, who were aware of his ill health. Many were also aware of his
dignified bout with Cancer fifteen years earlier, a fight he had used to popularize Cancer research
charities. The message is that, politics aside, the Duke both was a class act and
still representative of American strength and character.
This is also one of Lauren Bacall's better roles. Although she's rarely been anything less than
good, she's ill used or underused in many pictures. Her sober landlady here is a rigid Christian
with merit and judgment (something Peckinpah stopped depicting early on) and she's the perfect
foil for Wayne's last platonic fling of friendship. Anything would be an improvement over the
previous year's embarassing Rooster Cogburn, which had attempted to graft True Grit into The African
Queen and did little more than trash Wayne and co-icon Katharine Hepburn. Bacall is the glue
that holds The Shootist together. The other star actors are really playing walk-ons of
various sizes. James Stewart
gives his small role just the right turn, perhaps doing a minor character for the first time
in his career (yes, I remember Cheyenne Autumn, but he's definitely the 'star' of his segment).
Richard Boone has less screen time than John Carradine's wonderful undertaker.
Sheree North, a Don Siegel regular, seems to have been given her one-scene moment as a gift to play
opposite Wayne, and she does a fine job.
Then there's Opie. Ron Howard is just not this reviewer's cup of tea, and it has nothing to do with envy
of his directing career. Expert as he is, he's still a Hollywood youth actor, in this case blessed with
the ability to look vaguely 15 at age 25 or so. Howard's a far sight better than the 'youthful' losers
Wayne used to allow to scar his Duke movies (Fabian Forte horny in
North to Alaska, a dead racoon wearing
Frankie Avalon in
The Alamo). However, Savant can't
think of any great alternatives and should be grateful that Weepy Walton Richard Thomas didn't
get the part.
John Books is almost a character role ... in this film Wayne shoots a few varmints, but punches nobody
out. He doesn't go on a drinking binge (well, unless you take into account his medicine) and doesn't
drag Lauren Bacall around like Maureen O'Hara. Movies about people dying of Cancer, even John Wayne,
are a tough sell. The best promo hype they could muster in 1976 was that it was only the third
film in which a Wayne character dies.
(spoiler)
And that's the weakness of the movie: its own reason for being. It's about Wayne's fading light more than it
is anyone named John Books, real or unreal. The accompanying DVD docu says the book character was based strongly on
John Wesley Hardin, but goes on to add that Wayne made some major changes in the ending of the movie.
Apparently young Gillom Rogers is supposed to also be one of those who shoot Books at the end. Although
the docu doesn't specify, Savant imagines Howard was meant to put Books out of his misery, rather
than join the
villains. The docu does say that Wayne forced Siegel to rework a moment where
Books shoots Bill McKinney in the back (I just don't do that in movies!) and mandated
a reshoot. Wayne was almost always the biggest force on any of his pictures, which resulted in many of
his most obnoxious vehicles (Big Jim McClain, anyone?), and if The Shootist started out with
any point at all besides ol' Duke cashing in his chips, Wayne seems to have eradicated it.
In the docu, the producers concerned bemoan the fact that their perfect film was not embraced by the nation as
some kind of Bicentennial gift or something, but none of them care to admit that the movie is basically over
when Wayne bids adieu to Bacall and heads for the Saloon. (I can see it now - Alain Resnais'
The Shootist.) For a post-Peckinpah film, it seems strained that Wayne would arrange a
four-way showdown just by sending out party invitations, a ploy which has a generic laziness equal
to Marshall Dillon being
called out into the street each week, every week for 12 years ... Wayne's foolish foes arrive at the saloon
rendezvous at the same time and wait in alternating corners (accounting for Robert Boyle's
gargantuan set?) without so much as a how-do-you-do or even proposing a cooperative
plan of attack. The verminous
Bill McKinney (the Hillbilly rapist from Deliverance) pays for his sins here alongside
Richard Boone's more traditional villain. But all take turns trying to shoot Wayne instead of just
blasting him in a
free-for-all. The redeeming factor is the bartender, who at least conforms to Books' adage that the
one who gets ya is the geek you ain't watching out for.
Paramount's DVD of The Shootist looks great, far better than the studio print Savant projected in Mike
Frankovitch's rumpus room in 1976, for him and Dino de Laurentiis (the first time the Italo
master-producer had seen it - during its release!). 1
16:9 enhancement can't make the redressed Burbank Studios streets look like Carson City, Nevada, but the colors
and clarity are very pleasing to the eye. The sound is functional and Elmer Bernstein's
uncharacteristically restrained score handsome. The black and white opening montage culled from
Red River, Rio Bravo, and El Dorado is grainy and a bad idea - it seems to
announce that this is a career accolade and not a real movie, an impression which Don Siegel and co.
have to work very hard to overcome for the next 98 minutes.
The docu on board, unattributed to any producer, is informative, if a bit bland, and allows the producers
of The Shootist to air their version of every issue. Frankovitch and Swarthout sons are there,
protecting the nest egg: even while projecting for Frankovitch long ago, Savant was aware that his
new regime
at Columbia was the one that clobbered Major Dundee and initiated the career persecution of Sam
Peckinpah (with Peckinpah's self-destructive help, of course). Producer William Self won't seem
familiar to fantasy fans, but you'll remember him from an earlier age as an actor, playing the jokey
radio guy in Howard Hawks/Christian Nyby's The Thing.
On a scale of Excellent, Good, Fair, and Poor,
The Shootist rates:
Movie: Good
Video: Excellent
Sound: Excellent
Supplements: Docu
Packaging: Amaray case
Reviewed: July 31, 2001
Footnote:
1. Frankovich, pleasantly tipsy, came to the booth to bawl me out
for my lousy projection skills. Dino came too. Although I'd heard him speaking plenty of
broken but coherent English, when I said I loved his Danger: Diabolik, he cooly pretended
to not understand and ignored me. Return
DVD Savant Text © Copyright 2007 Glenn Erickson
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