The Shootist (1976)

By the late 1960s, the Western as a popular movie genre was on it's way out and the ones that did get made started to reflect that thinking. Movies like The Wild Bunch and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid dealt with characters who no longer fit into the world, who had to watch the slow but inevitable passing of the Old West. It is perhaps fitting that the most poignant of these movies just happened to be the last movie of what may well be the most legendary Western star of all.

1976's The Shootist opens with a montage of scenes from earlier John Wayne westerns, including Hondo and Rio Bravo. The theoretical purpose of the montage is to tell us the lethal legacy of Wayne's character, J.B. Books. But the montage also serves as a reminder of how dominant an actor Wayne was in the genre.

Books arrives in Carson City on January 22, 1901. He hasn't been feeling like himself so he goes to a doctor (James Stewart) he trusts. He finds out he has Cancer and maybe two months to live. He wants to die in peace, so he rents a room from a widow (Lauren Bacall) and her son (Ron Howard). As people find out not only who he is but that he's dying, the glory seekers and vultures come out. Eventually he decides he'd rather go out in a blaze of glory than screaming in agony.

The Shootist is packed with guest appearances from various friends and costars of Wayne's. Besides Bacall and Stewart, Richard Boone, John Carradine, Harry Morgan, Hugh O'Brian, Scatman Crothers, Melody Thomas Scott, and even Johnathan Goldsmith--the Most Interesting Man in the World himself--all appear. It's a hell of a cast, the type you don't see much anymore. I don't know how many, if any, realized they were going to be in the last movie John Wayne starred in, but they all play up to the part.

Clint Eastwood's Gran Torino seems to have borrowed quite a few things from this. In both films, the protagonist develops a fatherly relationship with a young boy who tries stealing from him. Both films have a man of violence who learns he is dying of cancer. Both heroes decide to go out with a bang instead of a whimper.

But while the film should be a completely sober and depressing piece, Wayne elevates it above the morbid. He's still John Wayne after all. The scene where he turns the tables on greedy Undertaker Carradine and makes him pay for the privilege of burying Wayne is hilarious. But it's his verbal sparring with Bacall that really makes the movie. She loathes him at first, then pities him, then wants and needs to save him. She can't, of course. But watching two old pros like these play off one another is justification enough for the movie. And it's all done without really becoming a love story.

Some may complain that Wayne never really acted, he just played John Wayne over and over. But that can be said of a lot of actors then and now. After all, didn't we like Jimmy Stewart for essentially being Jimmy Stewart over and over? Wayne was a personality performer and like all personality performers, we watched him be him and loved it. He was a forerunner to later action heroes like Sylvester Stallone, only he managed to make some better movies. The Shootist is the last chance we get to see what made him such a great personality and by extension, such a great actor.

Contrary to popular belief, Wayne wasn't dying when he made The Shootist. He had been in remission since 1969. None the less, this does seem to be his way of facing his own mortality. Three years later he would be gone having made no more movies. In that sense, this is his goodbye and it's a beautiful and emotional one.

Gran Torino (2009)

When we first meet Walt Kowalski in Gran Torino, we meet a man who really hates the world. He has nothing but contempt for everyone and everything: his kids, his grandchildren, the priest officiating over his wife's funeral, and anyone who is not the same race, color, or nationality as him. He refers to various characters as gooks, spooks, dagos, Chinks, and micks. He sits on his porch all day drinking Pabst Blue Ribbon and looking at his most prized possession, a 1972 Ford Gran Torino. So naturally when Thao, the Hmong teenager next door, is pressured by a gang to try to steal said Gran Torino, it sets off a chain reaction of events that will change the entire neighborhood.

He chases off the gang--hilariously growling "get off my lawn" in typical grumpy old man fashion though aiming a rifle at them--when they come back to beat Thao up. He also saves Thao's sister from three would be rapists. These actions make him a hero to the neighborhood and--whether he wants it or not--friends with his neighbors. He eventually warms up to them, even while calling them gooks. When the gang not only won't go away but crosses the line, Kowalski knows what he has to do to stop them.

In a lesser actor's hands, Kowalski would be just a bad caricature. Fortunately, Clint Eastwood is playing Kowalski, not as a caricature but as a natural extension of the sort of characters he used to play. Kowalski is Dirty Harry after retirement, still angry and willing to kick ass no matter how politically incorrect that may be. It's as classic an Eastwood performance as they come, sometimes humorous, sometimes sad, always awesome. It's a fascinating performance as he allows Walt to change and grow without seeming to. On the one hand, he spouts racial slurs right up to the end. On the other, he develops a closer relationship to Thao and Sue than to his own family. He becomes a father figure to Thao, trying to help him stay out of the gangs and become someone. And when things go very horribly wrong for the family at the end, he becomes determined to not let Thao ruin his own life.

This is a movie of race and redemption. It is not an action film but a meditation on letting go of prejudice. In Kowalski's case, this doesn't just involve the family but the ever persistent priest who tries his best to reach Walt and get him into confession. It's message, though never preachy, runs through, staring you down the entire time. I suppose that's something that would make some uncomfortable, but uncomfortable truths can sometimes lead to better tomorrows.  It is actually quite amazing--to say nothing of disappointing--that the film received no Academy Award nominations. One of the true mistakes by the Academy.

Ultimately Gran Torino is not dissimilar to John Wayne's last movie, The Shootist. Both movies are about men of violence nearing the end of their lives who find much needed redemption. Gran Torino plays a little less somberly but no less powerfully. It is a chance to see a master actor and director once again prove what made him a legend. It was supposed to be the last movie Eastwood acted in. He did go on to do one more, but this still serves as a fond farewell to a type of character he had done so well over the years.