The Gunfighter (1950)

(On Cable TV, January 2021) I don’t particularly like westerns, but the specific sub-genre that had to do with the end of the wild west always has me intrigued—it’s as close to an original take on deliberate colonization as American cinema gets, and I find those issues to be more inherently interesting than the typical desperadoes-on-their-horses too often seen. 1950’s The Gunfighter, in some ways, can be seen as a precursor to a wave of revisionist westerns that would build on the clichés of the genre. Here we have a familiar figure—the fastest hand in the west—treated in a more realistic fashion: the trouble with being known as the top dog is that others will target you to make their own reputation, and there’s no end to that except, well, being shot by the newest and fastest kid in town. Gregory Peck stars as the titular gunslinger, portraying him as a man who’s tired of being at the top and is looking for a way out. The film dangles a quiet retirement in front of him, but we know it won’t be so simple, and the elegiac ending has hints of inevitability that almost puts The Gunfighter alongside film noir themes. Unfortunately, the film does not have the snappy rhythm than its 85 minutes and almost real-time chronology would suggest—some of the plot screws could have been tightened. But it’s an interesting western that heralds many similar end-of-an-era films—including the superior The Shootist—and survives a modern viewing better than many of its contemporaries.