I opted to go for a John Wayne Western while looking for a movie to watch on a Friday night without knowing much about it beyond the title. What I didn’t know what this was his last movie before he died of cancer was one where he played an aging gunslinger who was, well, dying of cancer. For a guy known for so many Westerns, to the point where this movie opens with footage of his older movies to show what the character was like in his youth, and have the character dying of the same basic disease that was killing Wayne in reality…well, that sure is a weird coincidence. I say this with no idea of whether or not the filmmakers or even Wayne himself knew about his cancer diagnosis, though to be fair, Wayne died in 1979.
And man, did this one have a pretty impressive cast beyond Wayne.
Renowned gunslinger J.B. Books (Wayne) rides into Carson City, Nevada, looking to find his old friend Doc Hosteller (Wayne’s Liberty Valance co-star Jimmy Stewart). Doc has some bad news: Books has cancer and only days to live. About all he can do is give his old friend some drugs to make his final days a little more comfortable. Realizing he doesn’t really want to die in the middle of nowhere, he makes arrangements to move into the boarding house for a religious widow, Mrs. Bond Rogers (Lauren Bacall!) whose son Gillom (Ron Howard!) idolizes men like Books. And though Books initially gives a false name and wishes to stay anonymous in his final days, his secrets are soon out. And while Mrs. Rogers doesn;t much care for what Books has done, the two do form a somewhat tenuous romance as Books basically just wants to die and retain whatever is left of his dignity.
But the thing about a dying shootist, one who is known for his killing of 30 men in his time, is that anyone with a grudge will only have a limited amount of time to get it while others are looking to take advantage of a dying man’s fame. All Books wants is to more or less die in peace, but that won’t even be possible since Doc has pretty much assured him that his death will be incredibly painful. And even as Books and Mrs. Rogers maybe form a bond and Books offers Gillom some lessons on being the sort of gunslinger that the modernizing West won’t really be needing much longer, Books has enemies and people who want a piece of him one way or another. Can Books die on his own terms?
Now, for the record, I’ve generally been more of an Eastwood western fan than a Wayne western fan, but this one did come from frequent Eastwood director Don Siegel, and there’s some actual poingancy to this one. Plenty of people that Books meets wants to get something from him, and he seems to approve of some more than others. Basically, the polite ones who won’t make Books out to look like something he doesn’t want to be known for, he doesn’t seem to mind and even in one or two cases seems to approve of. Most of the movie seems to be about the relationship between Books and Bond Rogers, and while Maureen O’Hara is renowned for being a very formidable woman who could stand up to Wayne’s own onscreen bravado, Bacall gives just as good in her own way.
Essentially, I felt this was just a good sort of late period Western. Modernization is coming, even as one of Books’s wouldbe killers is driving an early car. Wayne’s age is showing, and this time it’s showing in the actor just as much as it is in the character. It’s a movie that asks what happens to a Western style hero dying of an incurable disease, but it’s still a John Wayne movie, so he’ll at least end the movie in a heroic manner while also tacking on an ending that wouldn’t look out of place in Eastwood’s Unforgiven without hitting quite so hard. The Shootist isn’t really on the same level as Unforgiven or even many of Wayne’s best movies, but it was a fine movie in its own right, and as final movies go, this was a good one for Wayne to end his career on.
Grade: B+
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