The Shootist [DVD] [1976]

"The Shootist" is a film of remarkable restraint, that achieves a wonderful eloquence. Wayne and Bacall have some nice scenes together as the widow becomes fond of the dying gunman. But it is the dynamic between Wayne and Howard that drives the film, as the gunman tries to explain to the hero worshipping boy that killing men is not a heroic enterprise. Ultimately, it is left to the boy to learn that lesson for himself and finally get the stamp of approval from his hero. It is impossible to watch "The Shootist" and not think of Wayne's last appearance at the Academy Awards, shortly before his death, when the cancer that would claim his life had reduced his body to a gaunt figure. Life does not always imitate art. But no other major star in the history of film did a better job of going out on their own terms.

The sepia-toned opening sequence is a brief collage of scenes from several of the Duke's past films ... for by 1976 John Wayne - the American Western incarnate - was dying of cancer: he had to be hoisted onto/off his horse, and most of his wincing was that of genuine pain. But did he ever complain? "The hell, you say ...!" Staunch right-winger he may have been (he was President of the American Legion), but he also lived his life as many a character of his many films: decent, upright and honest - one of America's greatest cultural exports. And this credo is summed-up during the film:

"I won't be wronged, I won't be insulted, and I won't be laid a hand on. I don't do these things to other people, and I require the same from them."

Wayne is, of course, the star of the film, but he is magnificently accompanied by grande dame Lauren Bacall (in my view still the most elegant lady in Hollywood - bar none), along with such stalwarts of the Hollywood Western as James Stewart, Richard Boone, John Carradine, Scatman Crothers, Henry Morgan, and Clintwood regular Bill McKinney. The younger generation is represented by Ritchie Cunningh ... sorry, Ron Howard.

Legendary part-time lawman and full-time gunman John Bernard Books rides into Carson City on the day of Queen Victoria's death in January 1901, and both Books and the viewer are immediately assaulted by the city's outward display of the New Century and Modern Times: the tram, 'horseless carriages,' telephones and electricity. Books already knows what Doc Hostetler (Stewart) tells him: that Books is both out of place in the changing world ... and dying of cancer. Books befriends widow Mrs. Bond Rogers (Bacall) and her son Gillom (Howard), who hero-worships Books throughout the last eight days of the latter's colourful and eventful life. Determined not to die the lingering cancerous death Doc Hostetler tells him will be unavoidable, J.B. Books goes down in the Metropole saloon with guns blazing, ridding the town of its least-savoury elements.

Gillom had listened dewy-eyed to Books' pearls of wisdom on Life and the truisms of the ugliness of surviving gunfights, but did not really take any of it in ... until he avenges Books' death at the hands of a low-down back-shootin' bartender: that taking a life also takes a part of one's soul. The look of regret in Gillom's eyes as he laid his coat over the dead J.B. Books, encapsulated every Western-lover's thoughts at the time: Farewell Duke ... [I'll be honest: I shed a tear or two at the passing of this American legend every time I watch The Shootist - and I'm not ashamed of it.]

An entertaining and thoughtful film - a fitting final tribute to larger-than-life John Wayne. He died with his boots on.