The Shootist (1976)
Directed by Don Siegel
Afflicted with a terminal illness John Bernard Books, the last of the legendary gunfighters, quietly returns to Carson City for medical attention from his old friend Dr. Hostetler. Aware that his days are numbered, the troubled man seeks solace and peace in a boarding house run by a widow and her son. However, it is not Books' fate to die in peace, as he becomes embroiled in one last valiant battle.
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What critics compared The Shootist to
The film is a relatively straightforward western drama, a “famous gunslinger’s last rodeo” type adventure not unlike The Shootist and it is quite successful in its respective goals.
“Logan” calls back directly to “ Shane ,” including a scene in which the characters watch the film, but it has more echoes of late-career films for icons such as “ The Shootist ” and “ Unforgiven ” in the way it deconstructs the line between hero and legend.
For this superior followup, Mangold and Jackman turn to the Western; "Shane" is referenced directly, but the violent result is closer to a Sergio Leone revamp of John Wayne's final film, "The Shootist," as an ill, perhaps dying hero, Logan (Jackman), aka the Wolverine (the ex-X-Man with the adamantium claws), is pulled from self-medicated seclusion for a final mission involving his former mentor, Professor X (Patrick Stewart), who is succumbing to a neurodegenerative disorder, and a silent, scary-eyed little girl (transfixing newcomer Dafne Keen), whose own retractable talons and lethal athleticism have made her the target of the usual hunting party of corrupt government/corporate agents.
There are all sorts of shades of gray in this interesting end-of-the-trail Western, which combines the theme about legends and gunfighters with the sad-but-triumphant elegiac tone of "The Shootist," John Wayne's last Western.
Eastwood’s portrayal of Walt echoes a career capper of his predecessor John Wayne, but rather than the self-parodying True Grit it’s the similarly mournful The Shootist (directed by Clint mentor Don Siegel).
It�s utter sap on that level, but Eastwood plays Walt with a farewell-tour gratitude, like John Wayne in The Shootist.
He deserves a "True Grit" or something on the order of "The Shootist."
Working from a graphic novel by John Wagner and Vince Locke, screenwriter Josh Olson creates a modern-day parallel to all those classic Westerns (from "The Gunfighter" to "Shane" to "The Shootist" to "Unforgiven") in which world-weary gunslingers naively think they can hang up their six-shooters -- at least until, inevitably, their violent pasts catch up with them.
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There’s a great line John Wayne has in 1976’s “The Shootist,” where his gunslinger character explains his deadly reputation: “Sometimes it isn’t being fast that counts, or even accurate, but willing.
This was presumably a chance to have a thematic reckoning with the iconic character, the way that John Wayne had the good instincts to do with his final film, The Shootist .
It’s no coincidence then that Scorsese decided to include in the film a brief shot with the background of a cinema playing John Wayne’s own final hurrah, “The Shootist” — a film in which Wayne portrayed a dying and disabled cowboy nearing the end of his life and haunted by the violence he committed on people.
In this, it figures among the oldest staples of film and myth-story, from Bs up to High Noon and The Shootist.