Plot Details: This opinion reveals minor details about the movie's plot.

Directed by Monte Hellman in 1967, "The Shooting" is a very bleak, inordinately cryptic, pretentiously existentialist, and very, very "1970s" film. (Indeed, it was Hellman's prominence in "Decade Under the Influence" that convinced me to check out this movie that was made before "Easy Rider" established Nicholson; Hellman and Nicholson were Roger Corman proteges and he financed "The Shooting" and "Ride the Whirlwind", the latter written by Nicholson).

After a paranoid opening scene of Will Gashade (Warren Oates [Bring Me the Head of Alfredo García]) returns to a small mining operation and being shot at as he reads the marker of a fresh grave, the silhouette of a woman (Millie Perkins [The Diary of Anne Frank]) appears. The unnamed woman hires Will Gashade (Warren Oates) to guide her in pursuit across Utah desert of someone, though he does not know who or why. Coley (Will Hutchins) the mildly retarded boy Gashade protects (recalling "Of Mice and Men," prefiguring "Scarecrow" and "Dominick and Eugene") does not want to be left behind and tags along, besotted by the woman (who could care less about him). Halfway through the movie, Jack Nicholson joins the party, playing a quick-drawing, deadly shooting, bloodthirsty mercenary named Jack Spears, outfitted in somewhat dandyish black duds. Many a western involves obsessive, relentless pursuit for vengeance, but usually the audience has some idea of what is being avenged and who is being pursued (for instance, "The Searchers," "The Bravados," "The Return of Frank James," etc.). I

In this minimalist movie, Nicholson is relatively restrained, although the smirk was already in place. Millie Perkins is cranky, but lacks the fierceness of Barbara Stanwyck in the westerns she made and seems more petulant than ferocious. Will Hutchins overacts the sweet dimwit part. Warren Oates is laconic, involved for reasons of his own.

Hellman claimed that the movie is his take on the pursuit of Lee Harvey Oswald, which I doubt would occur to anyone viewing the movie unaware of that claim. (And the backstory such as some of it is revealed, which is not much, does not involve assassination of any official, let alone a president.) Hellman also invoked Albert Camus's The Stranger as a precedent, though other than the burning sun and a shooting, I don't see much connection.

The DVD is devoid of extras. The movie only runs 82 minutes, but except for the last two, very little happens. There are two surrealistic encounters with other people over the movie's course (so fans of "Dead Man" might enjoy this movie). The viewer's mind can easily wander as Coley leads the others along the tracks in the desert toward the rocks that provide more photogenic shootouts for the ends of innumerable westerns. The revelation of who has been tracked flashes by quickly, and I was glad that I was watching it on DVD rather than in a theater, so I could replay it rather than be left wondering if I'd seen what I thought I saw.

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This is a conttribution to sleeper54's Lean & Mean V blowout; the movie is short without being lean and Millie Perkins tries to be mean. As for my title, the main competition is "High Noon."


© 2006, Stephen O. Murray

Recommended: No

Viewing Format: DVD