Art imitating life
While giving Wayne credit as an enormously popular personality, I have never thought of him as much of an actor. He is always swaggering, wise-cracking John Wayne. Ironically, this film, in which duplicates his real life role of a dying cancer patient, Wayne shows his full depth as an actor.

The Old West, along with its most colorful characters, is irreversibly changing. In the same way that Wayne, riddled by cancer in real life, is changing. Wayne isn't the only one. Richard Boone, Hugh O'brien and others know the sun is going down on a way of life that lasted no more than twenty-five years. There will be no room for wanderers and gunslingers. What better way to end it than in an act of mutual suicide?

Yes, I know that's NOT what the film is supposed to be about but that's what it is about. Boone and O'brien, in an effort to right old wrongs and to inherit the ailing gunfighter Wayne's glory, decide to shoot it out. Everyone is prepared to die and, not remarkably, everyone does.

Like Kirk Douglas' "Lonely are the Brave", this is a 'small' film about the end of the old West. It's a great movie.

Ron Braithwaite author of novels--"Skull Rack" and "Hummingbird God"--on the Spanish Conquest of Mexico

The Shootist
I bought this dvd as a gift for a friend. I have seen this movie and it is excellent. It was shipped fast and was received in excellent shape.

A Legend Passes
"I won't be wronged, I won't insulted, I won't be laid a hand on. I don't do these things to others and require the same of them." Books credo and a fitting finale to a long and legendary career. Once there were giants. Wayne, Cagney, Cooper, Hepburn, Grant, Gable, Flynn, Bogart, all gone. We shall not see their like again. Wayne, undoubtably the most popular movie star of all time ( He was number one at the box office 21 times -- Gary Cooper did it 18 and Clint Eastwood 17), after a career of classic films in the 1940's and 50's, some routine oaters in the 1960's and early 1970's -- broken up by TRUE GRIT -- the Duke ends his career (though he didn't know at the time) with a movie that eerie reflect of the man and his life.

the shootist
I bought this for my husband who has a lot of John Wayne films.
We watched it and it was fun to watch him "enjoy" the old movie and have a good clean movie day with our kids.
It was fun to watch "Opie" Ron Howard as a young man. My kids knew. or know him as "opie".
Too bad they don't make good clean movies any longer.
Thank you
shipped quick too

A Fitting Tribute
This was John Wayne's last and best role. The Shootist (1976) didn't do well at the box office, but it has grown in stature with age. Wayne had already been fighting cancer for two years when the film was made and a lot of his friends joined the cast as a way of saying goodbye. (The casting of Ron Howard as the boy caused the ending to be softened from the book, but it still works.)

This combination eulogy and ensemble film never wallows in pathos and you believe that J. B. Brooks really reflects John Wayne inner character . This is a engaging story that shows that Wayne was not just a great star, but he was also a great human being.

The special feature on the making of the film is also well worth watching.
The Shut Mouth Society
The Shopkeeper